"I would get pushed around, bumped out of a race"- Carlos Sainz reminisces about his karting days before F1

Carlos Sainz Jr. has spent most of his life on the track. His father, Carlos Sainz Sr., a two-time World Rally champion, guided his young son in his early days and is a big inspiration for the Ferrari driver.

Speaking to The New York Times in a recent interview, Carlos Sainz recollected his karting days and how his father helped him build aggression. He said he was a very shy and quiet kid and would be trampled on by others in his age group. He said:

"I used to be very shy and I used to be friends with a lot of people, all the racing drivers. When I would then arrive at a go-kart track, I would get pushed around, bumped out of a race by people I thought would never do that to me because we got on well out of the car."

The young Spaniard's father then taught him a lesson he will never forget. He explained that there are two types of people in the world—the hunter and the hunted. And young Carlos should choose to be a hunter on the track to win. Sainz Jr. made it his life mantra and sticks by it to this day. He said:

"My dad told me ‘look, it’s not only in life but also in any sport you do, you either bite or you get bitten. You need to be the one pushing, to be the hard one, because if you’re not, you will be the prey’ – that advice changed my approach and my career. Once I put the helmet on, I try to be the animal hunting, not the hunted animal."

The Spaniard won his first karting championship, the Asia Pacific KF3 title, at the age of 14 and was runner-up in the Spanish championship. He won the Junior Monaco Kart cup in 2009 and was the runner-up in the European KF3 championship.

In 2010, he became part of the Red Bull driver academy named the Red Bull Junior Driver Team and raced in the Formula BMW series.

He debuted in Formula 1 in 2015 driving for Torro Rosso, the sister team for Red Bull. Carlos Sainz reached Q3 in his debut race, the 2015 F1 Australian GP, and finished ninth in the race scoring points in his debut.

Carlos Sainz moved to Ferrari in 2021 after two successful seasons at McLaren and finished the season placing fifth ahead of teammate Charles Leclerc.

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Carlos Sainz says racing might be in his genes

In the interview, Carlos Sainz mentioned that he is very good at what he does also because the drive for motorsports runs in his family. He said:

"My bet is there must be something genetic in it."

He also mentioned that he learned tricks at a very young age, which made him feel as though he were born to race. He said:

"There is a video of me when I was 2½ years old in a battery car, and I was doing 360s and Scandinavian flicks where you do a perfect sideways corner. No way my father taught me that. But when I look back on those videos, I feel there was something inside my body that knew how to drive, even at 2½ years old. I was born to drive, you can see it in the video."