Carlos Sainz wakes up every morning before eight in his Italian home, located between Maranello and Modena. Then he has a coffee. He showers, dresses, and herds for Ferrari headquarters. He does so in a discreet group car, usually an Alfa Romeo, one of several in a small fleet available to important employees. To the cheetah keeping quiet, without making noise… he is the one who obtains the red podiums.
When you want to meet someone, do not pay too much attention to what they say, but silently observe their actions; in that there is no deception possible. If you point the spyglass at Sainz, it is when he arrives at his gig that you discover something small, a seemingly absurd detail but that speaks for itself. After parking the Giulia burgundy, the red soldier crosses the gallery that leads to the main entrance of the building, and salutes the guy at the door with his eyebrows. The person in charge of security responds with a slight bow of the head and a smile from ear to ear if Sunday went well.
After the obligatory PCR test that they perform every time he accesses the facilities, the man from Madrid goes through the aluminum and glass door. Instead of aiming his 66 kilos towards the comfortable elevator to the right, Take the three-flight staircase on the left. These little things speak, and they tell you that the comforts are fine, but it is handled with ease and without fear of the difficulties of the earthly. That is one of Carlos’ enormous strengths: he lowers his head, he saves his thoughts, and if he has to train for two hours, he ends up dialing three on his smartwatch.
At Gestione Sportiva he is highly appreciated, he has spoken Italian since his time in karting
Every Monday after a race he has meetings on the first floor with the engineers; sometimes it is with those of aero, with those of performance, with those of strategy. In his backpack he always carries his laptop on which he takes notes. It is the same that he uses to be in contact with his girl and her friends; he connects with them almost daily in the late afternoon, once back home.
When he is in Italy it is very common for him to order his dinner at the Montana restaurant, he likes it. It does not abuse the pasta and measures to the gram what is encaloma between chest and back. Her diet is rigorous, and she burns thousands of calories every day, so Mamma Rosella sleeps with no conscience whatsoever. At Manage Sportiva He is highly regarded, he has spoken Italian since his time in karting, and one of his main assets at the Scuderia is Marco Matassa, with whom he worked at Toro Rosso, especially after the departure of Max Verstappen.
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Tuesday and Wednesday he sets fire to the simulator, although not every week. When he is not perched on the latest creation by the British company Dynisma, he is recording videos for the marketing people or for the brand’s social networks, or preparing for the next races. It’s rare the day that you don’t book a couple of hours at the gym that has the Scuderia glued to the track of Fiorano. In each appearance he never takes less than a couple of hours of punishment, and is usually accompanied by a coach, but no one else. On account of the Covid, the collective use of the premises is greatly restricted, and accesses are greatly controlled, as is the factory. Karting sessions continue to be in his work plan, either in Italy or Madrid, on the family-owned track named after his father. He says it helps him stay in shape and tests one of a pilot’s main tools: reflexes.
He has only lived since he was fifteen, although from time to time, when his cousin and manager Carlos Oñoro visits him, stays with him. When he lived in London, he did not have a gym in the apartment and he had it worse, so he moved to Madrid, where he could punish himself with what was prescribed by his coach. In his hometown, he usually travels in a Volkswagen Golf and has no home of his own, so he stays at his parents’ chalet. Another sign: you spend your money only when you really need it. It was right there, and very soberly, where they celebrated their signing for Ferrari. There was no chillerio or fuss; Everything came very smoothly, many steps were taken, and happiness was charged in installments. The negotiation, with the pandemic in full swing, was discreet, with a lot of videoconferencing and emails in between. Completely irregularly, there were hardly any face-to-face meetings. In principle, the idea was to renew with McLaren, in fact the team was determined to extend the relationship, but when Ferrari knocks on the door the very rare is the one who says no.
A Formula 1 driver is a complex mechanism that requires a series of conditions to be successful. Some are seen coming from afar, others take a little longer, and most never come because they barely have the external rods to build something consistent. Carlos Sainz, the son of El Matador, only has to win a race so that the doomsayers stop mistrusting his worth, because his statistics only indicate that he is flattening his uphill from day one. He came to Toro Rosso, jumped to Renault, went through McLaren and in his fourth team he achieved three out of four podiums in his first season with them; a season in which he was called to be the second driver but that leaves behind the one considered first. Carlos is the first rookie Ferrari that has not abandoned in a single race after his fifteen performances dressed in red. No newly signed driver has ever achieved this figure anywhere near, despite the fact that this year is the biggest calendar in Formula 1 history.
Carlos has steadily gone from less to more, without a single drop in performance or results, in an example of good management of a sports career without any error in decision-making. It is a recurring pattern in his sports biography that he reaches the categories almost timidly, without enormous results, and in the end he always ends up collecting solid awards. It happened to him at lower levels, and in F1 he is taking steps and growing as a driver just as he did then. Paired with his calm spirit in Maranello a front-line runner is cooking that with the elegance of others who championed before, without fuss and almost silently, they won titles in efficient open fighting against not easy enemies.
He may lack the mordant that other opponents possess, but his seriousness, work ethic, perseverance both on and off the track, make him that freight train with three hundred cars that is unstoppable at the end of the journey. When in Formula 1 your ticket is bitten, hopefully many years from now, it will be the perfect pilot for resistance. His starts have improved a lot, in the race he gets away from complications, he knows how to take advantage of other people’s follies, and he has learned a lot from his mistakes in the first laps. Those light touches that end up costing you positions or extra stops are typical of what the English call ‘over-ambitious’, but it is logical … without that you cannot win. Write it down to credit.
Cold, polite, sincere, discreet; very Castilian, like Captain Alatriste, who goes to what he has to go and has plenty of the rest. On the track it is fast, discreet, clean, and efficient in almost any asphalt condition. They love him at Renault, they respect him at Red Bull, and they adore him at McLaren. At Ferrari, where he has fallen on his feet in all planes, they are realizing that they were completely right when signing him because he is returning more than what they bet on him when signing his contract. The night the paper was signed, the Sainz opened a bottle of wine … but not just any wine. It was a bottle of the Pegaso wine, the winged horse Sainz senior has shares in, which seemed like a premonition of what ended up arriving. Horses, wings, and a swordsman who silently sharpens his steel every night.