MPH: Carlos Sainz still has no 2025 F1 deal. Because a Mercedes seat is opening up?

F1

Carlos Sainz has repeatedly stalled in making his 2025 F1 team choice – but has the market moved towards him?

Carlos Sainz with George Russell in F1 press conference

The chance to partner George Russell at Mercedes in 2025 is perhaps F1's most coveted opportunity

Clive Rose/Getty Images

Mark Hughes

The driver market blocker Carlos Sainz claimed jokingly (?) that he’d been too busy watching the Euros in these last couple of weeks to think too much about which team he will be driving for next year.

Recall he said he was on the verge of making up his mind three races ago, at Barcelona? The press release confirming him at Williams seemed imminent. But then didn’t Flavio Briatore step in with his bold promises of a revitalised Alpine team, possibly with Mercedes power units from ’26? That gave Sainz – still with that Audi offer on the table too – pause for thought.

So three of his potential team mates were together at yesterday’s FIA press conference – Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon and Nico Hulkenberg – and inevitably Sainz featured in the conversation. Gasly was the boldest, saying, “I welcome the fastest [available] guy out there. We all know who it is. We just have to wait. But yeah… the team has three good options.”

Asked if he’d spoken to Sainz about it, Gasly replied. “Yeah, I did my fair share of the job, but ultimately I believe in the projects we’re building with Alpine and I always back the team up. Now it’s up to him to make his own decision.”

Pierre Gasly talks to Carlos Sainz at 2024 F1 Canadian GP

Gasly going for the hard sell? Alpine driver has tried to entice Sainz to the team

Jayce Illman/Getty Images

It’s not so much indecision, more that the landscape keeps changing. The Briatore development was one example of that. What if there was another? What if there were two others? What if something had made him want to be absolutely sure that there was no Red Bull vacancy. What if, furthermore, the signals coming from Mercedes about a seat there had recently changed? Either or both of those would understandably make Carlos stall for time before signing with Alpine, Williams or Audi.

Red Bull has got a bewildering number of options between the four seats of its two teams. Max Verstappen has said he intends to remain where he is next year, though his father Jos makes no secret of the fact that he’d like to see him out of there and at Mercedes. Max will do whatever he decides to do but if you were Christian Horner you would certainly want to have a contingency in the event of Verstappen suddenly deciding to leave at the end of the season. A known quantity grand prix winning driver who has never shown either the immaturity of Yuki Tsunoda or the alarming variations in form of Sergio Perez or Daniel Ricciardo, Horner’s three in-house options. Of the available drivers that man is obviously Sainz.

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But there is a conviction within the team that he could not be paired with Verstappen. Not only because of the fractious nature of their pairing as rookies in 2015-16, but also because Verstappen’s internal power as a triple world champion makes it his territory. The concern would be that signing Sainz might actually trigger the very Verstappen departure they are trying to cover for. So while Sainz would be the ideal option if Verstappen left, he’s a non-starter if Max does as he says he’s going to do and stays.

Meanwhile Toto Wolff is keeping channels open in the hope of bringing Max aboard at Mercedes. Kimi Antonelli remains favourite to replace Lewis Hamilton there next year but would be placed elsewhere (Williams?) if Verstappen should suddenly become available.  Antonelli’s F2 season is not going as well as expected (though he did take his first victory at Silverstone) and so it would only be reasonable if there were concerns about whether he’d be ready as an 18-year-old for a ’25 Mercedes seat. Hence Carlos Sainz has never fallen off Mercedes’ list as a possibility.

From Sainz’s perspective, while the prospect of keeping Antonelli’s seat warm for a year in an uncompetitive Mercedes would not have been enticing, what about two years in a Mercedes team which has won the last two races? That would be more than he’d dared hope just a few weeks ago. That quickly changing landscape explains the delay far better than any indecision.

But maybe Carlos really has just been too preoccupied with the Euros. There was a note on the windscreen of his friend Lando Norris’ car in the Hungaroring car park. It read ‘Spain 2, England 1’.