Carlos Sainz continues to stir rumours in the driver market. In fact, during a press conference a few weeks ago, Kevin Magnussen called Sainz the “cork in the bottle” of the driver market. However, a new arrival may entice the Spaniard to finally put pen to paper for next year.
With the arrival of former Ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto at Audi, Sainz may be motivated to sign an offer that has been on the table for a while. However, when discussing his hire at Audi, the 3-time race winner focused on the Italian could bring to the team
“I think, first of all, I’m not up to date with everything that is going on at every team but of course I think the arrival of Mattia to any team is positive, mainly because he has the experience of what it takes to build a team that is a top team nowadays, like it is at Ferrari.
“And he has that experience from Ferrari that he can bring into Audi. And I’m sure it’s a great asset for them. And that’s why they hired him. And yeah, of course, I wish him all the best there.”
When asked if the opportunity to join Audi became more likely, Sainz once again stayed silent, stating he is taking his time to make the call on which team he chooses.
“Not really. I think my future is still being discussed and obviously analysed very carefully.
“And there’s changes to a lot of teams that I’m looking at for next year pretty much every week. So there’s changes, evolution on the team market as much as there is on the driver market.
“And I’m just going to keep giving myself time to take the decision to analyse all these things that keep changing. without giving you too many clues here.”
Sainz will try to make an impression when F1 races in Belgium this weekend. The 29-year-old says that it will be more difficult this weekend for Ferrari, comparing it to Silverstone regarding a lack of pace to the top teams.
Hungary had shown encouraging signs, with Charles Leclerc (P4) pushing Hamilton and Verstappen throughout the Grand Prix. The Spaniard was also close in 6th, finishing within 2s of Verstappen and 8.5s of Hamilton.
“Completely different circuit to Hungary. I think Hungary is somewhere closer to, for example, Barcelona in terms of the downforce and the corner speeds.
“But yeah, I think now Spa is going back a bit more towards Silverstone kind of track. And last time we were in Silverstone, we struggled as a team.
“So yeah, encouraged to see the progress in Hungary, or we were a little bit quicker in Hungary, especially in the race.
“But let’s see how we are in Spa and if we can keep trying to get closer to the, I would call them now top two teams, because it’s clear that McLaren and Red Bull, when they switch it on, they have three or four tenths advantage over us.”
