As Hamilton appears to be taking Sainz's seat in 2025, where does the Smooth Operator go? Ricciardo is likely to take Perez's seat at Red Bull, so does that leave an effective seat swap between Lewis and Carlos? All the best, Andrew.
I am not certain about that now ! Ricciardo's main advocate is Christian Horner who won't be in position to make essential decisions soon, by the look of it. Also, Ric's performance are not that good on the whole.
So he could drive an Alpine lol. They were going to use Alpine PU and a total of 80% Alpine overall. Haas and Alpine are the least desirable seats on the grid. At least Williams are making an effort. Sainz should push for Mercedes or MaxBull. Those are the best options for any competitive hope!!
If Kimi Antonelli doesn't pick up his pace rapidly, not only will he not be in Mercedes F1 next year, he won't be in F1 at all. Merc will want to see him at least challenge for the title before sponsoring a seat in F1, and the question if that'll be a Merc seat is still quite big without an F2 title. If Sainz keeps performing as he does he'll surely be the prime candidate for that seat. And it won't be a 1 year contract. Minimum 2.
Not to mention a large chunk of Santander cash could be following Carlos to wherever he ends up.$50 million a year ish...
They are all hoping for a new Max Verstappen, but the hype isn’t reality. Toto seems absolutely lost since their technical team is hugely weakened. Fact is this Mercedes team is no more the dream team.
Was and is that the case with Alonso after he left Ferrari? IMO, Santander cash only follows F1 Spaniards that go to Ferrari...that's it.
Very impressed with cs. He is as fast as lec or just a tick slower but cs has much better race craft.
We'll see what happens this year, but while Sainz is not (for whatever reason) considered as fast as Leclerc, he's been very consistent. And one may begin to wonder why it's always Leclerc's car that allegedly has setup problems.
The smarter more consistent driver. Charles is over paid and over rated so far. He makes double what Carlos does.............for what?
Ferrari just wanted a bigger fish...HAM. But I think this will backfire for the team. Ham is not a team player. he is all about himself. Only when the team is firing on all cylinders does it look like he blends with the team. When the team does not do well he become adversarial and a mental drag on the team. At this point in time I don't think Merc sees the exit of Ham as a loss to the team. The Merc team thinks they are stronger than Ham and they are correct. I actually think Merc could advance well as a team with a RUS /Sainz pairing.
My bold prediction: Lando to RB in Perez' seat and Carlos returns to McLaren -- the only condition under which they'd let Lando walk away
