NIt was never wrong for Carlos Sainz to wait until the last minute, like his soul soccer team. This is how the agreement with Toro Rosso came about back in 2014in Abu Dhabi, the last race, with King Juan Carlos speaking with the Emirati owners of IPIC (Cepsa) in the team’s box and pushing to give the boy a chance. They had fired Vergné, Carlos was one of the four on the shortlist… the agreement came from one day to the next, at the last second he finally entered F1, he had his chance and it’s almost a decade away.
Nor in 2020 when an offer came from Ferrari that few were counting on., but in which his people did leave a margin of success, especially his father, even if it was slim. He was, “in the right place in the right place. You can be great, we all are when we arrive, but you also have to be at the right time to take advantage,” he said yesterday in Montreal in reference to Pepe Martí’s future options. . But a little also his own ability to resist and wait.
Now It is Mercedes who doubts who should replace Lewis Hamilton. They have spoken with Sainz, they know that he wins races over Verstappen, that he is at the age, that he plays as a team, but they have not finished unraveling the daisy and they continue to test and test more with Kimi Antonelli, bright future, not so present yet. Sainz himself remembers that he was the same in the summer of 2013, andn Silverstone in its first test with an F1, that of Red Bull. According to what he himself acknowledged to MARCA, “Those tests saved my season, because I know what wheels I was using, what fuel, and what Vettel was using that day.” And so it was, he soon arrived in F1. Did Antonelli’s recent test go equally well? Carlos is already an old fox and he resists. He refuses to sign anything black on white. It is difficult to reach the star, no one denies it and everyone knows it, but not impossible.
With the certainty, furthermore, that A victory in Canada would turn the tables again Carlos continues playing his game. Given what we saw with Márquez and Ducati, the way in which he overtook Jorge Martín on the left, Carlos makes his friend Marc’s adventure and the classic that ‘even the tail everything is a bull’ his own. “I’m fighting here for victory, as we fought in Monaco and then in my home race, Montmeló, I have to focus on maximizing my options and not on offers about my future,” he comments.
“It is my team and my people who study and analyze everything, we will sit down in due course with all the cards on the table and I will decide the best option of all the ones I have,” insists Carlos, whom Williams already wants, and Sauber (Audi since 2026) has loved him for months and is still waiting for him. Williams in 2025 would be stronger than this Sauber that is now awaiting the German landing, and also with a Mercedes engine, with half a Mercedes car and ex-Mercedes personnel at the helm in addition to great ties between the two.
The decision could be finalized next week. before the Spanish Grand Prix from June 21 to 23, an ideal place for an announcement, although it is not the limit, but it does mark just the middle of the calendar year, a classic in F1 contracts with its clauses and times .
