‘I managed an F1 team and I cannot believe what Ferrari did to Carlos Sainz’

Carlos Sainz Jr will be replaced by Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari next season, the Spaniard is currently fifth in the drivers’ standings and just 60 points behind team-mate Charles Leclerc

Ex-Williams team boss Peter Windsor has expressed astonishment at Ferrari’s treatment of Carlos Sainz Jr. despite a sterling performance at the US Grand Prix.

The Spaniard came in second to fellow Scuderia racer Charles Leclerc, contributing to a nearly flawless weekend for the legendary Formula One team in Austin, Texas.

Despite his impressive run at Circuit of the Americas, eyebrows have been raised with the revelation that Sainz will exit the Italian outfit at season’s end regardless of his results, clearing the path for Lewis Hamilton to don the Ferrari scarlet in the upcoming campaign while Sainz signed a two-year deal to race for Williams from 2025.

Windsor, taking to his YouTube channel to air his views, was blunt in his assessment: “I cannot believe that Ferrari are sacking this guy at the end of the year. I say that word ‘sacking’, because that’s what it amounts to.

“They decided to sack him at the start of the year and no racing driver ever, and I’ve been racking my brain to think about it, has ever been put in that position of having to be the full team player. All the support, winning races, getting podium finishes, great seconds, whatever and knows that he’s lost the drive at the end of the year, regardless of what he does,” reports the Express.

“In a sporting ethics way it’s a really, really tough thing to do that. Absolute 100% respect to Carlos for the way he’s handling it with the smile, they way he works with the team, just absolutely brilliant.

“He races Char (Charles Leclerc) hard, as we saw yesterday. It’s a shame he couldn’t get a little bit nearer, because of that issue, but it was a very, very good second place and a great one-two for Ferrari.”

Sainz has enjoyed an impressive campaign in this year’s F1 season, sitting pretty at fifth in the leaderboard, only 60 points shy of teammate Leclerc and a solid 38 points ahead of his successor Hamilton.

The 30-year-old has openly expressed that getting the boot from Ferrari was a bitter pill to swallow, especially since he reckons nothing went pear-shaped on his end.

In a prior interview, he confessed: “This is perhaps the most difficult part to explain, because from my point of view, nothing went wrong. The fact is that Lewis Hamilton has decided to spend the last part of his F1 career at Ferrari. Seen from this perspective, I was somewhat the victim of this decision.”