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Carlos Sainz is one name that has popped up as a possible candidate for Max Verstappen's teammate at Red Bull in 2025. The Spaniard has been in red-hot form this season. He was on the podium in Bahrain and finished P3.
In Australia, the driver secured Ferrari's first win and ended Verstappen's nine-race winning streak. In all of this, it was interesting to see how Christian Horner specifically pointed to Sainz, who has been performing well when talking about possible Red Bull choices in 2025.
Sergio Perez's contract comes to an end this season. While he has had an admirable start to the year, it's hard to deny that Perez will need to continue with this form a lot longer to show that he deserves this seat.
On the other hand, Sainz has laid down an impressive benchmark at the start of the season and made a compelling case to be Verstappen's teammate.
What if we told you that the Max Verstappen-Carlos Sainz partnership is highly unlikely to materialize in 2025? Let's take a look.
Unwillingness to play second fiddle
When Red Bull is looking to hire a driver to be Max Verstappen's teammate, one of the key things that the team will be keeping in mind is whether that driver is willing to play second fiddle if needed.
One of the reasons why Sergio Perez made a compelling case to be Red Bull's second driver was his willingness to consistently compromise his race and help Verstappen if needed during a season. The 2021 F1 season saw this often, with Perez proving to be a valiant teammate in battles against Lewis Hamilton.
Carlos Sainz is not a driver who's going to play the team game like Perez did. If the car development direction is not in favor of his driving style, he would be vocal about it.
More importantly, he will join Red Bull to fight for a title and demand equal rights as Verstappen. If that doesn't happen, he won't take it lying down.
Max Verstappen-Carlos Sainz part 1 had a lot of friction
Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen have been teammates in the past as well. The two debuted in F1 in 2015 together as teammates in Torro Rosso. While the two didn't collide with each other throughout the season, there were tensions between the Sainz and Verstappen camps.
Verstappen ignored team orders to let Sainz through in the 2015 F1 Singapore GP which led to tensions. The two were quite competitive, with Sainz holding the edge at the start of the season but Verstappen taking over in the second half.
The relationship has improved since as the two have gone on their separate paths but even Red Bull would be aware of how tough things could get when trying to manage these two in the same team.
Decisions cannot be made on hype alone
Finally, the most important point that several F1 pundits and fans appear to fall victim to is the recency bias. Since Carlos Sainz last won the race in Singapore in 2023, he didn't outqualify Charles Leclerc even once until the race in Melbourne.
Not even once since then did Sainz beat Leclerc in a race until the race in Bahrain, where his teammate had a brake issue. Recency bias is a big thing in F1 but if a methodical team like Red Bull is trying to hire a driver as a teammate for Max Verstappen, then these details cannot go unnoticed.
Is Sainz a massive upgrade from whatever Sergio Perez is doing at Red Bull alongside Verstappen? Or is this a short-term hype based on one very strong weekend? The Austrian team is going to bifurcate the hype from the data and then make the decision.
