What next for Sainz after Hamilton’s Ferrari F1 bombshell?

Try not to feel too sorry for Carlos Sainz. Yes, Lewis Hamilton has blown his Ferrari career up in spectacular fashion, but in Formula 1, as in life, when one door is slammed shut so another shall open (somewhere).

Especially so if you’re as good an F1 driver as Sainz has become. He’s comfortably within the top 10 best on the grid right now and therefore would be an asset to any team.

It’s also not in Sainz’s own nature to sit around moping. In that respect, you can take his post on social media about him giving his best for one final season in Ferrari red as genuine. 

Sainz is made of stern stuff. He will simply dust himself down, get on with the job and then move on with his life. No hard feelings.

This mentality is necessary when you’ve bounced around teams like Sainz has: Toro Rosso (for almost three seasons), Renault (for one and a bit), McLaren (for two), then Ferrari (this will be his fourth).

He knows how to adapt, and how not to burn bridges on his way out.

The Sainz camp does not exactly seem blindsided by this development with Hamilton and Ferrari. 

They were feeling pretty confident about extending Sainz’s stay with Ferrari on favourable terms heading into the 2023 off-season, and were not exactly enamoured with what they called “bulls***” reports coming out of Italy that there was some kind of misalignment with Maranello during the negotiations.

They felt the only way Sainz’s Ferrari career would be derailed would be something monumental like F1’s most successful driver making a blockbuster decision to exit as early as possible the new Mercedes contract he agreed to only six months prior.

Ferrari’s feeling it might snare Hamilton explains perfectly why the Sainz contract situation suddenly became so opaque. It’s also something Sainz himself will perfectly understand. If Ferrari has a straight choice between signing Lewis Hamilton for 2025 or resigning Carlos Sainz, it’s no contest really.

Sainz will land on his feet somewhere. He’s simply too good a driver not to.

If the car requires a tendency to understeer, he’s probably one of the best out there – which also applies in mixed or wet conditions.

In the dry, Sainz is giving away a tenth or two to Charles Leclerc – when Leclerc is at his best in a car, set-up ‘on the nose’, that he likes.

There’s no shame in that either – Leclerc is one of the very fastest F1 drivers on the grid; the most talented Sebastian Vettel said he’s ever seen.

Sainz could walk into any F1 team and feel confident he would do a very good job for them. And the fact his Ferrari exit has been decided on February 1st, and not in, say, September (or later), is very good news. It means he has time to plan ahead.

When Sainz was swept up in the unfortunate political wrangling between Red Bull and Renault in 2018 -…