Carlos Sainz reveals a rare spiritual side he used while dealing with the struggles of the 2024 F1 season

Carlos Sainz has shown a rare spiritual side of himself when he talked about the kind of adversities he had to go through during the 2024 F1 season at Ferrari. The Spaniard had one of his more challenging seasons in the sport last year.

At the start of the season, he was in negotiations with Ferrari for a contract extension, but out of the blue, it was announced that the Italian team had signed Lewis Hamilton. Then, during the second race of the season in Saudi Arabia, Carlos Sainz would be forced to miss the event because he needed to have surgery to remove his appendix.

The entire 2024 F1 season saw the Spaniard struggle a lot when it came to finalizing where he would be and what his next move would be, especially with teams like Mercedes and Red Bull notably not showing much interest in signing him.

As a result, after spending the last few years racing for McLaren and Ferrari and fighting closer to the front of the grid, Carlos Sainz was looking at a future where he would be racing at a team that was closer to the back of the grid. Talking about the year on the High Performance Podcast, the Spaniard talked about how he looked at the season and felt that someone up there had decided that the season was going to be a struggle for him. He said,

"I went to Jeddah and then my appendix decided it was the right time in my career to show up. I had to miss that race. It's like life is hitting me hard for some reason in 2024. For some reason they've decided this is my character-building year and I took it a bit like that."

He added,

"Like someone up there has decided this is the year to give me a bit of a hard time. I need to fight back, you know. And I remember having the appendix surgery and having to watch the race in the box with the team. I decided to walk into the paddock that day still limping."

Carlos Sainz explains why he decided to still be at the paddock after his surgery

Unlike other drivers who would take time off and try to recover after an invasive surgery, Carlos Sainz had surprisingly decided to show up to the race even though he was still recovering. The Spaniard opened up on his thought process behind it as he revealed that he wanted to show the team how he could still be useful and help Ollie Bearman in his first race of the season. He said,

"I went to actually help Ollie. I went to a race to sit down with my engineers and help Ollie to try and help the team. And I said, 'You guys decided I cannot continue with this thing, but I'm going to show you my worth apart from just driving fast cars and driving as fast as I can.' And I said, 'What can I do?'"

He added,

"And I actually went to the paddock that day and said: I'm going to use this as an opportunity to see how my engineers communicate with Ollie, what kind of screens they're seeing, how are they saying things, and I'm actually going to be a third engineer for them to maybe learn what if I was only in the car, what kind of information I would need to get in this exact moment."

By the end of the season, Carlos Sainz had found his new home at Williams, a team that was looking to rebuild and get back to its glory days. Alongside Alex Albon, the Spaniard had formed a strong relationship as both tried to help the team take the steps to the front.