Carlos Sainz makes humble admission of Ferrari dropping him for Lewis Hamilton and not Charles Leclerc

Carlos Sainz has made a humble admission that he realized if Lewis Hamilton was joining Ferrari, Charles Leclerc was never going to be fired. The 2024 F1 season started on a rocky note for the Spaniard when, out of the blue, the announcement was made that the 7x world champion was leaving Mercedes and joining the Italian marque.

The news came at a time when Sainz was in the middle of his negotiations with Ferrari and would then realize that his future for 2025 was not secure. After months of negotiations and talking to different teams, the Spaniard was finally able to nail a seat at Williams.

The move to drop Sainz was a surprise, however, as the Spaniard had been an able contributor to the team throughout his stint. Even though Leclerc was maybe a step ahead in terms of peak performance, Sainz's consistency meant that the gap was not too big.

With that being said, if there was an opportunity to sign Lewis Hamilton, a team would not let that pass, and that is exactly what Ferrari did. When questioned on the Beyond the Grid podcast if he felt maybe Charles Leclerc could have been dropped, Carlos Sainz said that something like that was never going to happen because the project had been built around the driver. He said,

“I understand it was never going to be Charles. Charles has been the project of Ferrari ever since he’s been a junior driver. He’s been the centre of the project for many years, I arrived at Ferrari more as a substitute of [Sebastian] Vettel, almost a bit… not by chance, but circumstantial, rather than Charles who has been there forever."

He added,

“So I understood I had to be, in a way, the one being replaced, and I understood it from the beginning. I just obviously didn’t agree so much at the time. But you end up agreeing and you end up getting on with it.”

Carlos Sainz understood Ferrari's choice of going with Lewis Hamilton

The Spaniard has admitted since then that he was hurt to lose his seat. However, he does admit that if there was ever a driver on the F1 grid he would have been fine being replaced by, it was probably Lewis Hamilton, who is one of, if not the greatest driver in F1 history. He said,

“100 percent. I understand and I think I understood it almost right from the beginning. I think, if it had been someone else, I would have taken a lot longer to understand."

He added,

“But when you understand Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion, and one of the best – if not the best – in history, is going to replace you at Ferrari, and Lewis has decided to do the last part of his career in Ferrari… You need to be one of the two drivers sacrificed for that to happen.”

Carlos Sainz is now embarking on a long-term project with Williams, a team that is in a rebuilding phase and would be hoping to make the most of the Spaniard's experience of being with some of the best teams in the sport.