The Red Bull seat alongside Max Verstappen remains Sergio Perez’s to lose, but Christian Horner is assessing all his options including Carlos Sainz, who is leaving Ferrari
Red Bull have been told to sign Carlos Sainz for next year if they want to provide genuine competition to Max Verstappen.
The Spaniard is freely available for a 2025 F1 seat after Ferrari decided to replace him with Lewis Hamilton. And he has so far taken his opportunities to show the rest of the grid what he is capable of, even after being told by his employer that he wasn’t wanted.
Sainz finished on the podium in Bahrain, ahead of team-mate Charles Leclerc, before appendicitis forced him to miss the Saudi Arabia race. He made a triumphant return to action in Melbourne where, just two weeks after surgery, he took advantage of Verstappen’s DNF to win.
As a result of his stellar form, the 29-year-old is considered a top contender for seats towards the front of the grid for next year. Mercedes definitely have a vacancy and Toto Wolff is considering throwing Sainz a lifeline.
But Red Bull could also make a play for the Spaniard. Sergio Perez has started the new campaign fairly well himself, but has a lot of work to do this season to convince Christian Horner that he remains the right man to be trusted with the team’s second seat.
Should Red Bull decide to make a change, former F1 driver Hans-Joachim Stuck thinks signing Sainz is a no-brainer. “If I were the boss of Red Bull, I would use all means possible to find a fair solution to terminate the contract with Sergio Perez,” the German told Eurosport.
“There are certainly clauses in the contract. And then I would offer Sainz the cockpit. At the moment there is no-one better.” Explaining his belief, he added: “Firstly, I would like it because competition stimulates business. Secondly, I’m sure Max would sleep worse if he knew that Sainz would be his new team-mate.
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“In addition, there comes a day in every career when you lose your status. Verstappen is number one at Red Bull, but at some point that too will be over. Either he is getting too old or a new team-mate is suddenly putting pressure on him. Such a situation can result in two things: Verstappen becomes even faster, or he falls apart.”
Verstappen and Sainz were Toro Rosso team-mates for a little over a year when they first entered F1 but, while one progressed to become the face of the Red Bull organisation, the other was forced to leave. That, Helmut Marko explained, was because of how the relationship between them deteriorated.
The Austrian said: “It was [Sainz’s] bad luck to get Max as a team-mate. The atmosphere between the two at Toro Rosso was quite toxic. In the set-up we had at the time, I couldn’t see a way of keeping him with us and so he moved to Renault, McLaren and then on to Ferrari.”
