Former F1 champion surprised by Carlos Sainz not having a seat next season 

Former F1 driver and world champion Mika Hakkinen recently expressed his astonishment as Carlos Sainz heads into another F1 race without a seat for the 2025 season.

Lewis Hamilton is set to replace Sainz at Ferrari in the 2025 F1 season. Despite the Spaniard's competitive edge in recent years, he currently has no offers from other teams. He also won the Australian GP last month.

Heading into the Japanese GP (April 7), former driver Mika Hakkinen discussed Sainz's situation and called him "one of F1's quickest and most consistent performers."

His post on X (formerly Twitter) read:

"It is incredible that Carlos Sainz Jr, Australian GP winner, does not currently have a drive for next season. It means that one of F1’s quickest and most consistent performers is now available to Mercedes, Aston Martin and Red Bull. He must be very motivated in #JapaneseGP."

With Hamilton's departure, Mercedes will have an empty seat for the upcoming season, and as of now, the team has yet to finalize a replacement.

Additionally, Sergio Perez's current contract with Red Bull is set to conclude after this season. While there's a possibility of an extension, Carlos Sainz stands as the frontrunner for the seat.

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Carlos Sainz hopes to challenge Red Bull "more often" in his final season with Ferrari

Ferrari has been the only team to challenge Red Bull in their dominant period so far.

Sainz secured victory at the Singapore GP last year and triumphed at the Australian GP last month. While Max Verstappen's retirement on the third lap of the race undoubtedly aided the team's success, their overall pace remained competitive throughout the event.

Carlos Sainz, predicting the rest of the season, stated that it would be tough to keep up this pace until the team brings an upgrade.

"I think our car really worked really well this weekend. But I think it's going to be tough to keep it up there in every track until we bring an upgrade to close that gap that we saw in Bahrain and Jeddah. But around Australia, from lap one, it felt like a race-winning car. And even if Red Bull were also quick and were on pole, that (1:15.915s pole lap time) in quali wasn't out of reach for us."

Sainz said that Ferrari would exhibit strength on certain tracks, as demonstrated in Melbourne, before expressing hopes to challenge Red Bull "more often".

“Yeah, there will be tracks where we are strong like we saw last year. And this year it seems like our race pace is better even on those tracks that we are stronger. And together with a good development programme, I hope that we can challenge Red Bull more often.”

Ferrari currently stands second in the championship and is trailing Red Bull by just 4 points.