Carlos Sainz Jr. has gotten very, very comfortable with the middle of the top 10 in the Formula 1 driver's championship. He has finished sixth or fifth in each of the past four seasons, a time period that included a switch from McLaren to Ferrari. It means he should be in Formula 1 as long as he wants to be, but it also means he has the potential for a leap to championship contention that has never come. Until last season, he had never won a race.
This is the seventeenth installment of our driver-by-driver preview of the 2023 Formula 1 season. This weekend, we will be covering Ferrari. You can find the rest of our previews here.
Now, the situation is complicated. Sainz spent 2021 fighting teammate Charles Leclerc for position in the mid-field, but in 2022 the Ferrari team briefly tasted championship contention and Leclerc emerged clearly ahead of his teammate for most of the season. Despite grabbing his first win, Sainz left the season in a worse place than he entered it. He has been in far worse places than this before, though. Sainz is now in a perfect position to once again better his place in Formula 1.
HOW HE GOT HERE
Until his decision to leave Red Bull's junior program, the Carlos Sainz Jr. story looks eerily familiar to a half-dozen other stories just like it throughout the past fifteen years. Sainz, the son of rallying legend Carlos Sainz Sr., raced in a variety of lower-level car series with Red Bull backing until he won the 2014 Formula Renault 3.5 Series in 2014. That led to a 2015 F1 call-up at Toro Rosso, which lasted two and a half seasons before it became clear that Red Bull had no real interest in promoting him to the senior team. Whether or not staying with Toro Rosso the next year was an option, he knew he would have to leave the team to move up the grid.
That led him to a contract with Renault for 2018, but the team decided to move quickly and hire him for the remainder of 2017 for the final four races of the season. Sainz left Renault after just one full season for McLaren, where he started in 2019. Two years of outperforming Lando Norris got him a call from Ferrari, where he replaced Sebastian Vettel in 2021. Sainz went on to narrowly beat out Leclerc to lead Ferrari in 2021.
HOW 2022 WENT
That advantage over Leclerc did not last into 2022. Ferrari came out of the gates with the fastest car on the grid, an advantage that did not last and was constantly undercut by the team's in-race tactical blunders. Sainz scored a handful of podiums and won his first-ever race at Silverstone, but Charles Leclerc emerged as a clear favorite with the team as he held second in the championship, more than 60 points clear of Sainz.
GOALS FOR 2023
If he wants to win a championship, Carlos Sainz Jr. may still be at the right team. Ferrari proved at the beginning of 2022 that it could still build a world-beating car and pair it with a world-beating engine, and most of that staff remains; the leadership team that oversaw so many in-race mistakes and so little in-season development, however, is now gone. If he wants to win more races, Ferrari seems capable of putting together a winning car and he seems capable of fighting for wins against the best in the series.
The concern is that he has fallen out of favor at a team that has won so many titles by heavily prioritizing a lead driver. That was not the case in 2021, but if Sainz wants to return to equal footing with Leclerc he will need to perform on Leclerc's level early and often. If he can seize strong finishes ahead of his teammate early, he will put himself in a position where Ferrari will have no choice but to back him for a potential championship push. His goal for 2023 should be to get off to that kind of start.
A SUCCESSFUL SEASON LOOKS LIKE...
That being said, Sainz has a long and respectful career ahead of him in Formula 1 even if he never beats out Leclerc again. 2022 was still a relatively successful season even as he lost ground on his teammate, and 2023 could be, too. Sainz is at no risk of being replaced by a Ferrari driver academy prospect in the immediate future and seems to be more than capable of winning when given the chance.
The question is whether or not Sainz can go a level further. He is already an excellent professional Formula 1 driver, surpassing the likes of Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez. Can he reach the level of the Verstappens and Hamiltons of the world? To do that, he first has to once again show he is on the level of his own teammate.
