"As a driver, it's very important to feel at home and feel that the team wants you": When Carlos Sainz shared his honest opinion on his McLaren stint

Former McLaren F1 driver Carlos Sainz once spoke about the importance of feeling at home within a team after making his move to Woking in 2019. The Spanish driver signed with the iconic British team at the beginning of the 2019 season as the replacement for his idol and two-time F1 world champion Fernando Alonso after a rough 18 months at Renault.

The four-time F1 race winner had a tricky time in the sport after leaving the Red Bull family in the middle of 2017 to join the Enstone-based outfit. However, he was replaced by Daniel Ricciardo when the Aussie decided to leave the Milton-Keynes outfit after five years with them.

While speaking with Yahoo Sports in 2019, Sainz revealed the reasons behind joining McLaren and the role played by the CEO Zak Brown in getting him onboard, saying:

"What sold me on McLaren was, first of all, the connection with Zak and how much this team wanted me to join. As a driver, it's very important to feel at home and feel that the team wants you. I've always felt at McLaren it was pretty much love at first sight since we started talking.

"It was very important for me, after the Renault and Red Bull periods where I never felt fully at home, that I went to a team that wanted me and that I could show my talent, so that was a big, big part of it."

Carlos Sainz successfully managed to revive his and McLaren's fortunes in his two-year stint with the team in 2019 and 2020. He eventually moved on to Ferrari for four years and won races with them while the iconic F1 team became Constructor's Champions in 2024 for the first time since 1998.

When Carlos Sainz spoke about his early impression of Lando Norris

Williams F1 driver Carlos Sainz previously stated that he found his teammate at McLaren in 2019, Lando Norris, as "shy" but revealed that the duo developed a strong bond during the Winter Testing of that year.

As quoted by the aforementioned source, the 30-year-old said:

"The first couple of months with Lando, I saw him as a very shy guy. It was not very easy to get into him and start the jokes. But once we shared winter testing, and started doing on-track racing, all of a sudden you could clearly see we were going to get on very well, and that we were going to have a lot of fun. It has very quickly developed into a very strong relationship."

Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris led McLaren to a P4 and P3 finish in the Constructors' Championship in the 2019 and 2020 seasons as teammates. The pair continued their equation even after Sainz's exit from the British team and remained close on and off the track.