Home Sport Former Red Bull engineer opines why Carlos Sainz was never an option as Max Verstappen’s teammate

Former Red Bull engineer opines why Carlos Sainz was never an option as Max Verstappen’s teammate

Sport — 05/06/2024 · 0 Comment

Former Red Bull engineer Daniel Drury recently talked about why Carlos Sainz was never a strong option for the Austrian team. He reasoned that Sainz’s father, Carlos Sainz Sr., and Max Verstappen’s father, Jos Verstappen, would not have had the best relationship with each other.

Since Sergio Perez’s contract was about to run out in 2024, there were several rumors and debates about whether Red Bull would replace him with another driver. Among many drivers, Sainz’s name also popped up as a potential candidate for the team, since he was replaced by Lewis Hamilton in Ferrari in 2025.

On June 4, 2024, the defending world champions announced that they had extended Checo’s contract by two years, locking the Mexican till 2026.

Following this, Daniel Drury wrote on his X (formerly Twitter) handle, how F1 fans were speculating on Carlos Sainz’s move to the Austrian team. However, he also pointed out that fans forgot the tension Sainz Sr. and Jos Verstappen used to share when Sainz Jr. and Max Verstappen were teammates in Toro Rosso (currently RB).

When Carlos Sainz was starting his career in racing, he became a part of the Red Bull junior program. In 2015, he entered F1 with Toro Rosso, which was essentially Red Bull’s B team. He was teamed with another young driver named Max Verstappen. They raced alongside each other for a year after which Verstappen was promoted to the first team.

“So many people saying it should have been Sainz are forgetting that Jos and Sainz Snr. spent most of the time trying to kill one another at Toro Rosso. It was never happening,” Drury wrote.

F1 pundit on how the tension between Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen’s fathers could have hampered Red Bull

F1 pundit Simon Lazenby also touched on the tricky relationship between Carlos Sainz’s and Max Verstappen’s fathers. Speaking on Sky Sports F1 podcast, he initially stated that Christian Horner would have been tempted to hire Sainz. However, he also later mentioned that Red Bull would have struggled to handle the rough relationship between their drivers’ fathers.

“I think Sainz was, actually was Horner’s man a little bit, within this, if he were to come back, it would be Horner convincing him to do so. But I think the biggest problem there was back from the Toro Rosso days wasn’t it, and I think it’s the fathers are particularly not seeing eye to eye and I think that might have proved too much of a tricky thing for them to have to handle.” Lazenby said (at 20:24).

In the 2024 F1 drivers’ championship after the Monaco GP, Max Verstappen leads with 169 points and Carlos Sainz is fourth with 108 points.