On Ferrari Politics, Strategy And Carlos Sainz

on ferrari politics, strategy and carlos sainz

Just a heads-up / disclaimer, i am a leclerc fan and therefore not unbiased. I did, however, come into the sport as a ferrari fan and tried to give Sainz his dues, and I still want him to, but- oh, well. We'll just get into it.

Ferrari, for a while, has actively suffered due to its own politics. Seb Vettel didn't seem to get on well in the atmosphere. They haven't been able to hold on for a championship since 2007.

There's a little bit of background I think is important for the current setup in ferrari:

Charles Leclerc was the last driver signed by the ex-TP, Arrivabene, and renewed by him also.

Carlos Sainz was the first (major) signing by Mattia Binotto, and was then propped by the management of the team through 2022, influencing car development in a negative direction.

After Silverstone 2022, Leclerc allegedly threatened to leave Ferrari. Binotto was fired and replaced with Fred Vasseur, who worked with Leclerc in his rookie season in F1 in Sauber. It's heavily speculated that this decision was made to please Leclerc and prevent him from leaving.

The 2022 and 2023 cars were influenced by Sainz's feedback predominantly, and his comfort.

Sainz has been beaten in teammate H2H by Hulkenberg, Leclerc and Verstappen. He looked good against a rookie Norris, which earnt him the Ferrari seat in 21.

In 2021, Sainz outscored Leclerc by five points. Leclerc had two dnfs to Sainz's zero, and lost probably about 40-50 points through no fault of his own. 2022, Ferrari started the year with the fastest car, and went backwards throughout because they refused to valorise their faster driver, who lead the championship by a fair distance after the first few races, picking up a grand slam in australia and winning by twenty seconds there, instead aiming to get Sainz "comfortable in the car" (Mekies' words). In 2023, from Carlos Sainz Sr's words, the car was developed in Sainz's direction, and every ferrari fan agrees the sf-23 was a shitbox. Still, Leclerc was the only driver to overtake Verstappen on equal stints (LV23) and picked up a ton of poles, outperforming his teammate and AGAIN losing out to bad luck with the trilogy of DNF, DNS, DSQ in a season. These weren't small points losses, either. all in all, he probably lost forty points alone in the second half of the season.

So, under Vasseur, the team is taking a different direction, being now firmly lead by Leclerc, who signed a contract extension of five+ years with the scuderia. Meanwhile, Sainz struggled to be offered more than a one-year deal, and there were rumours in the press about Ferrari wanting to bring in Albon, Norris in 2025/6. They very clearly wanted to keep that second seat open, regardless of Hamilton - his availability was just a bonus.

The narrative, somehow, has been twisted into Carlos' departure being comparable to Sebastian's: a betrayal. Carlos was offered an extension in 2023, and didn't sign it, and instead his camp decided to start talking about their Audi offers during the Monza 23 weekend, as a way to put pressure on surrounding contracts, and Ferrari basically turned around, and said: fine. Go if you want.

Sainz has had a full season to negotiate. He's not particularly a victim here, in my opinion. He's repeatedly, across the course of his four-year stint with Ferrari, ignored team orders in both quali and the race to serve his own interests, and lies in interviews after. Two recent instances that spring to mind are Bahrain 2024, where he implied to the press he had similar braking issues to Charles' (he didn't) and Barcelona 2024/ Austria 2024, where he went against his own TP to say he never agreed to saving his tyres after overtaking and making contact with his teammate, potentially costing Leclerc and the team a podium / a position.

There's a reason Sainz is leaving. If it weren't for Hamilton, it would be Albon, Norris, or someone else. The two drivers aren't a good fit. Vasseur said he had to calm them down every two GPs. Sainz's camp is reportedly incredibly toxic to be around, in general, and Ferrari is one of the only teams where somewhere in the contracts they can't prioritise upgrades to one driver. they're the only team to consistently bring upgrades to both cars, regardless of how urgent those upgrades are.

The team has been obsessed with giving Sainz and Leclerc equal status. Now its actively harming them. Leclerc has long been faster. In 2019 he outperformed a 4xWDC in the form of Seb Vettel at points. He won his first two races back-to-back. People who know both compare him to Verstappen. After firing Seb in 2020, it was expected Leclerc would lead the team moving forward, but Carlos came in and demanded equal status, and now there's a whole mess as a result. No other top team is this nice. RBR, McLaren, even Mercedes to some extent, make no pretenses about who they prioritise, and it helps them. There's team orders regularly. This doesn't happen at Ferrari, and even if it does, Sainz ignores them anyway. and this isn't just from this year. This is from 23, 22 ("stop inventing!" comes to mind).

Along with this, he lies (or is just delusional) to the media, about pace, damage, strategy. It's exhausting to keep up with. Then, when Leclerc hits back, he's labelled a poor sport (his comments about "that moment in his career" were so cheeky, but in my opinion, not uncalled for), and he also made a comment after imola quali, but it was in french, to canal+. Anyone who follows Leclerc knows these comments aren't out of nowhere, and he can bite back if he needs to.

The issue isn't teammates fighting each other. It's that there's long since been a power imbalance in this team and Ferrari has suffered as a result. And it looks like they're going to continue to suffer in the next few races.

(Just needed to get this off my chest. I think Sainz actually is a pretty decent driver, but his politics just. Rubs me the wrong way and I need him to sign a contract so everyone else can start to move. I'm sick of talking about him).