Was Sainz wronged? How Ferrari led him on throughout Hamilton saga

16:16, 23 Jul

Updated: 21:49, 23 Jul

byNorberto Mujica

Carlos Sainz's first season with Williams is not going as well as it could be. Looking back at how his exit from Ferrari came about, the Spaniard makes a shocking revelation.

In the preparations for the 2024 season a shock came over the F1 world, Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari had reached an agreement to team up in F1 as of the 2025 season.

Speaking on the High Performance podcast, Sainz, the driver who had to make way for the 7-time world champion's arrival, disclosed his mental position prior to the then breaking news.

'Unsuspecting' Sainz had been 'stalled by Ferrari since October'

"I think it was around end of January or February. I was in the middle of my training preparation for the 2024 season," Sainz said.

"I was hopeful that the Ferrari was going to be a competitive car and I had done everything in December and January obviously to prepare myself for that season.".

However, his contract negotiations with the Italian team had freezed up, and an 'unsuspecting' Sainz couldn't see what was coming.

"Contract negotiations with Ferrari were a bit stalled in a weird way because we were talking since October to renew my contract and they kept postponing the point of signing and the point of coming to an agreement."

"I never felt suspicious, I always felt like they were just busy with something else and I never felt like it was not going to happen," he explained.

"Every feedback I was getting was, 'we're gonna continue for sure, this was just gonna take a couple of hours to agree to the economics side of things and the two or three things we need to agree on, on your future contract, but it's going to be an easy contract and we will do it very quickly.'"

Carlos Sainz's current season at Williams has not gone as well as he hoped it would.

'The shocking news was broken to me, not by Ferrari, but by a friend'

Expecting his contract situation to be resolved prior to the start of the 2024 season, the fateful call arrived.

"And suddenly in the middle of January, end of January, I receive a phone call and they suddenly tell me the news. I heard from a friend that called me, and I was completely shocked."

"I went from believing I was going to be in Ferrari for a while, still more, to suddenly now I'm out of Ferrari. Lewis is replacing me. What am I going to do now?," said Sainz revealing how lost he was at that point in time.

"It never occurred to me that that could happen. It was a bit shocking. It took me a good week to accept it and to assimilate it," he admitted.

Despite it all, it made Sainz 'a better driver'

However, the Spaniard bounced back to win two Grand Prix and finish 66 points behind his then Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc despite having missed the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

"You never get too much of a reaction from me," he said. "I think I’m quite level-headed in that sense, but that gave me a bit of a kick," confessed the Spaniard."

Despite the shock, though, Sainz believes the whole ordeal helped him improve. "I think it made me a better athlete, a better driver. What came out of me in March, April, May was probably the best version of myself as a racing driver to date."