F1’s Carlos Sainz embraces final races as a Ferrari driver: “No one can take that away”

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MONZA, Italy — Carlos Sainz didn’t shy away from admitting that the Italian Grand Prix weekend would be an emotional one.

The week leading up to Ferrari’s home grand prix is one of the busiest for Sainz and his team, who face extra pressure to perform. It can be easy to be caught up in the day-to-day grind: marketing, media and sponsor commitments, engineering meetings and greeting fans, to name a few. Hundreds of people wait just beyond the gates of the Ferrari drivers’ hotel, he says, for a shot at getting a photo, an autograph or just to cheer for them.

When entering weekends like this, racing at Monza, Sainz tries to be more present.

“More often than not, I end up probably in a loop where you just think that what you’re living is normal because it feels normal and standard now after four years of being a Ferrari driver,” Sainz said to The Athletic. “It’s very easy to take everything for granted and think that having all that people there is normal, that the racing in Monza is normal, that it becomes a job and it becomes a routine.”

But his perspective on weekends like this can shift into appreciation. After all, Sainz turned 30 recently. He’s spent 10 years on the grid, and the Singapore Grand Prix will mark his 200th career grand prix. He joined the Formula One grid in 2015 and became a Ferrari driver in 2021. He secured his first pole position and win with the Prancing Horse, amassing five pole positions, 21 podium finishes and three victories over the four seasons with the Maranello-based crew. And at season’s end, Sainz will close this chapter and head to Grove, England, to join Williams.

But for now, he’s focused on where his feet are.

“Going to so many races that we are doing nowadays, it’s very easy to fall into feeling that everything feels very routinary,” he continued about the Italian GP weekend. “So I try to extract myself from that feeling and try to really be appreciative, and always try and tell myself what Carlos, when he was 11, 12, 13 years old, would have thought.

“If you would tell him that now I would be living these moments, I’m sure he wouldn’t have believed it, and he would be enjoying it and trying to embrace it as much as possible.”

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Weathering a ‘roller coaster’ season

Sainz describes himself as a “short-term thinker,” focusing on the next race or year. Becoming a Ferrari driver is a dream for most competitors — if not all — in the sport, given it is one of the most successful F1 teams.

While competing for Toro Rosso (now known as RB), he formed a good relationship with the Italian mechanics and engineers. He said, “I knew they were putting in a good word about me to the Italian engineers in Ferrari because they normally fly together because the bases are only an hour away from each other. And then I remember thinking, maybe one day I can be a Ferrari driver.”

It happened in 2021, four years after his Toro Rosso chapter. One of his first memories with Ferrari happened at a special track to the team and company — Fiorano Circuit. It is a figure-eight track where Ferrari tests the cars, located near the factory in Maranello. Sainz remembers putting on the red suit and hopping into the red car, his father (a well-known and successful rally car champion) watching on.

“I saw him, a little tear falling down his eye when they told me when I left the pits in Fiorano for my first install lap in red,” Sainz said. “That is a memory that I will never forget.”

Sainz’s most successful seasons happened during this Ferrari chapter, the first top team he has competed for. The 2024 season marked the last of his two-year agreement, and he thrives on stability. Before Christmas last winter, Sainz expressed that his priority was to remain with the Prancing Horse. There seemed to be little reason to doubt Ferrari would extend his and Charles Leclerc’s contracts, keeping together one of the sport’s most consistently competitive driver duos.

But then came February 1, 2024.

News broke that Lewis Hamilton would join the Italian team in 2025, replacing Sainz and throwing the Spaniard’s future into question. He became the hottest name on the driver market, but the silly season wore on through much of 2024. To this day, Sainz still describes this year as a “roller coaster,” touching on the high of winning in Australia (16 days after surgery for appendicitis) and figuring out his future in the sport.

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“What I’ve been through this year is not ideal to perform at your highest level as an athlete,” Sainz said at Monza. “I think every driver that wants to perform at its highest level wants to have their future sorted and not have to worry about that, while having to perform in a Formula One season, in a team that already has a lot of pressure and a lot of attention and high tension environment like (at) Ferrari.”

But Sainz keeps showing up each weekend, knowing Hamilton will replace him at season’s end. Looking back over the campaign, he said he’s proud of how he handled the first half of the season “given everything that I had to go through and how relatively well the season went.

“But I do believe there’s lap time in the athlete when everything is a bit calmer.”

Sainz says it requires one’s full attention and effort to be competitive in this sport. He pours all of his training, time and thinking into racing and feels that has helped him win races and perform at the level he has in recent years.

“That’s why I say that is so critical, also, to make sure that you have everything under control.”

‘No hard feelings’ as Williams era beckons

Williams’ pursuit of Sainz began at the end of 2023 at the Abu Dhabi GP, team boss James Vowles confirmed in late July after announcing that the Spaniard would join the Grove-based team. Vowles’s message to Sainz remained the same.

“From the beginning, I gave him warts and all: ‘Here’s what’s going to happen, we are going to go backwards, here’s why, here’s what we’re investing in, here’s what’s coming, here’s why I’m excited by this project – and it’s your choice, very much, if you want to be a part of it,” Vowles said. “‘But I know that we will have success in the future and I know it’s going to cost us in the short term.’ And I’m confident that that honesty and transparency has paid off.”

Sainz has learned over his F1 career to trust his gut feeling about people. It dates back to his McLaren days, where he secured two podium finishes in the same number of seasons. He said, “I remember I’ve never enjoyed so much competing as I did my years in McLaren with Lando (Norris), with Andrea Stella, and we did (have) a very strong team. And I remember leaving that team thinking I want to go to Ferrari and perform there, but I think this team is going to be successful in the future.”

Three years later, Sainz was right. McLaren is challenging Red Bull for the constructors’ championship, the gap sitting at just eight points. The people component and belief in future success carried weight when deciding to join the rebuilding Williams team. Something that motivates him is how he’ll be able to help the project progress.

“I want to feel listened (to). I want to feel like I can help,” Sainz said in Zandvoort. “And this, in a historical team like Williams, when they have a clear vision and super committed to bringing the team back to the front with very clear investment partners, it’s something that was important for me.”

Sainz may be heading to an English team next season, but he’s not fully closing the door on Ferrari. And it’s not a surprise. He said their relationship didn’t break – the separation is “circumstantial.”

“The fact that I’m leaving at the end of the year, I think there is nothing really that is wrong with me and Ferrari,” he continued. “A seven-time world champion happened to want to come to Ferrari in the last years of his career, and I had to move aside and to obviously leave my space to Lewis. I have no hard feelings regarding that.

“I have probably still five to 10 years of career in front of me. So why would I close the door to a potential comeback?”

‘Always a Ferrari driver’

As Sainz climbed the pit wall and peeked through the wire fencing, the crowds dressed in rosso corsa cheered. Leclerc won the Italian Grand Prix that weekend, but it was possible in part thanks to Sainz.

Sainz critically helped Leclerc and Ferrari win on home turf by holding up Piastri. The Australian pitted on lap 38 out of 53, gaining quickly as the race wore on. But for him to catch Leclerc, Piastri needed to pass several backmarkers and Sainz. After the race, he said he knew the McLaren driver was gaining on him and what was at stake.

“I did my best to slow him down one lap. Then obviously, he was a second and a half quicker at that stage, so around Monza, it’s not like you can do much more than one lap.”

It ended up being enough. Sainz didn’t finish on the podium, but Piastri ended his day in second, 2.664 seconds off of Leclerc.

“It’s been an incredible weekend for me. I’ve enjoyed it a lot. It’s a shame not to be on the podium today. At the same time, I feel like today was a bit of a coin toss whether to stay out or not, get it right,” Sainz said. “Charles has nailed it together with the team. With me, if we wanted to be in that fight, we probably would have needed to stay in the train with the cars ahead after the first pit stop. We just lost the chance of a podium there.

“Honestly, very happy to see the team winning here this weekend. I wish I was there up there with the podium with Charles, but I think he deserves the win more than anyone today, so congrats.”

The Spaniard may be leaving the team at season’s end, but at least part of the Ferrari faithful likely will continue following his career. Sebastian Vettel once said, “Everybody’s a Ferrari fan. Even if they say they’re not, they are a Ferrari fan.” The same could be said for past Ferrari drivers. They may not wear the rosso corsa race suit but will always be part of Ferrari.

“There are many examples in the grid or in the past where every time there’s been a Ferrari driver that obviously has had also success, but also a good relationship with the tifosi, has then been remembered and has been treated really well from the tifosi all around the world, wherever they go,” Sainz said.

“I do believe that’s my case also. That’s why I’ve always said that once you’re a Ferrari driver, you’re always a Ferrari driver. No one can take that away from you. I’ve had the pleasure of doing it for the last four years, and yeah, I’m gonna enjoy it as much as I can.”

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Top photo: Sipa USA