Whisper it, but for a while it was looking as if Ferrari wasn’t quite as keen for Carlos Sainz to stay on as Carlos was to sign a new contract – but he’s turned it around this year and, as Andrew Benson explains, that Singapore win is only part of the reason Carlos has convinced the powers that be at Maranello that he’s the man for the job…
WORDS ANDREW BENSON PICTURES AND FERRARI
IN THE MIDST OF ANOTHER TOUGH YEAR
for Ferrari, Carlos Sainz has had his best season yet for the team, and it looks as if it will secure him a long-term future at Maranello.
Just after the summer break, Sainz’s position at Ferrari looked less guaranteed. He wanted to stay beyond the end of his current contract, which finishes next season, but the team wasn’t as sure.
There were questions about the dynamic between Sainz and team-mate Charles Leclerc; about some of the ways the intense competition between them had occasionally frayed more than the matey official Ferrari social media posts would suggest; about whether Sainz really was the best long-term partner for Leclerc, who remains the team’s primary driver in heart and mind, even if Ferrari doesn’t designate them as one and two, and both are treated equally.
But Sainz – who still has other options outside Ferrari for 2025, particularly at what will become Audi – has changed minds in his favour. As the season comes to its close, his desire to stay is matched by Ferrari’s wish to keep him. Things can change, of course, but for now it looks as if Sainz and Leclerc – for whom a new contract is a given – will be continuing together at Maranello for some time to come.
It’s easy to see why. On the face of it, on the basis of pure results alone, Sainz has been Ferrari’s stronger driver this year at the time of writing.
In the aftermath of the US Grand Prix, Sainz was ahead in the championship by 20 points, and he had won a race, which Leclerc had not, with a superb defensive drive from pole position at Singapore. There, the team’s quiet progress on race tactics this year under new boss Frédéric Vasseur became very clear as the pitwall managed both drivers, used Leclerc as a blocker and sacrificed him to manipulate the race to ease Sainz to victory.
It was the sort of grand prix that previous iterations of Ferrari might have fumbled in the past – indeed had fumbled. Think back to Monaco 2022, where it managed to turn a front row lock-out for Leclerc and Sainz into fourth and second through terrible strategic choices t
