Scuderia Toro Rosso has announced that Carlos Sainz will join the team with immediate effect. It means that the team’s driver line-up will consist of two F1 novices next year. The 20 year old Spaniard won the World Series by Renault 3.5 Championship this year. Sainz is the son of multiple World Rally Championship Carlos Sainz, who has been a Red Bull driver in recent years and will be competing in the Dakar Rally in a Red Bull supported Peugeot.
“With Carlos Sainz joining Max Verstappen in our driver line-up next year, we continue the Toro Rosso tradition of providing youngsters from the Red Bull Junior Driver Programme with their first steps in Formula 1,” said Franz Tost. “I have watched Carlos progress through the junior categories, always improving as he moved higher up the ladder, culminating in a well-deserved win in this year’s World Series. However, I also remember the day’s testing he did with us at Silverstone in 2013 in the STR8. He really surprised me and his engineers that day, with his mature approach and his speed.”
Isn’t 5pm on a friday night the slot reserved by people in PR to bury bad news? Why would they do this announcement now?
Yeah, they must be trying to bury the news, hoping nobody will notice when he shows up on the grid next year.
Carlos Sainz father is considered a legend in Spain, as a WRC driver and for his bad luck, losing the ’98 WC in the last day, 700 meters from the final checkpoint with a blowout engine.
Tommi Mäkinen learned of his victory, over the phone while giving an interview (“Carlos’s car cached fire 500 m from the final” he says… my finish is not all that good).
It was a defective batch of pistons that caused this problem.
An interesting story, Luis Moya, Carlos’s co-pilot, smashes the rear window of the Toyota Corolla, creating quite a commotion, so he issued an apology to Toyota, and here is the interesting part, Toyota issued a contra-apology, since they felt it was them who had to apologize for letting them down so close to the final.
Bernie wont be pleased,he does not like young people!
“Bernie wont be pleased,he does not like young people!”
..are you sure? I though he just didn’t want poor people – you know, the ones not able to afford a Rolex.
Is it me …… but there is disproportionate amount of Rolex advertising at GP’s these days (how watches do you have to sell ???) ……. I suppose Bernie sold any available space to Rolex at a knock down price therefore we now see whole GP’s sponsored as nobody is paying the high prices for a hoarding.
Hmmm, all new drivers. That seems like a recipe for disaster as neither driver has the experience to point the engineers in the right direction. They better hope one of them is truly gifted and as an innate instinct for directing the engineers with feedback. Otherwise the team is left with engineers working from telemetry only. Never have quite understood RBR decisions, particularly in reference to drivers, this one is equally perplexing. All for promoting new talent, like Ricardo, but the new talent needs to land in a team with some structure and reference points for engineers and drivers. Churning them through and hoping for the best is not good team strategy for driver development or car refinement.
Am I the only one seeing the opportunity to sell more cans of a certain drink? Cynical I know but, it’s happened too often before.
Thats the whole point of them being here, isn’t it?
So 1 will be on the F1 scrapheap at 19, the other at 22. JEV did well to last as long as he did!
I don’t know…for all the hype that surrounds Verstappen, I really do think he has that special x-factor and his instincts for wheel-to-wheel racing are very impressive given his age and (lack of) experience. His charges through the field at Imola and Macau were amazing. It may take time for him to adjust to F1, but when he does I think he’ll be very special.
Yes, but the same could be said of Alguersuari, or even Da Costa, and probaby JEV. It doesn’t matter how special he is, at 17 he needs a couple more years at World Series or GP2 level to hone his skills. Look what happened to Jaime, he was dropped into the middle of an F1 season (where there is no testing allowed) at age 19, and then is on the scrapheap by 21.
I’m all for promoting youth and up and coming stars, but I really question Red Bull’s methods and philosophies. Kvyat could of course yet question this, but I still think they need to stop and think about their actions sometimes.
The cynical part of me does think that Marko is happy to throw young drivers into F1 regardless of whether they are truly ready, just so that it prevents other teams from developing the same driver into a future Red Bull beater.
*even if it means destroying their careers.
I agree Martin, but isn’t it the same at the other end of the scale? A driver like JB, who has a title to his name, 15 wins, and has stacked up against LH and not been found wanting, looks to be shown the door, while still being a strong and capable force, who could win another title with the right car. When I was a kid, Jack Brabham did his last season at 44, and won in South Africa, and was a title contended for most of the year, losing two races right at the very end, one, a mistake at M-C and the other was fuel starvation at Brands Hatch.
Now drivers are being placed in F1 cars almost from birth, and the saying that he ” threw his toys out of the cockpit ” has never been more in tune with reality. I think a driver can be young, as with Ricardo Rodriguez or Chris Amon, but they should have been on a clear path of series like in the past, FF1600/FF2000/F3/F2, before being placed in F1, and once there, they should not be ejected while they are in race winning form, just because they reach 29 or 30!
The way F1 is now, it looks from the outside, that the series is not the most difficult to drive in, and not at the top of the motorsport mountain, but somewhere on the upper slopes instead. That isn’t how it should be.
“The way F1 is now, it looks from the outside, that the series is not the most difficult to drive in, and not at the top of the motorsport mountain, but somewhere on the upper slopes instead.”
There’s a contradiction between racing difficulty and F1 technology. If engineers are allowed to apply technology as they do today, a driver is unlikely to over-rev the engine or to coax the car to end of race stuck in top gear. Technology may assist participation by women or disabled drivers via “easier cars” — we had more diversity in the past and I am delighted that F1 driving has become less muscular.
This year’s rules (with mid-season adjustment about pit-driver communication) are a bit of a fudge. If F1 used the best technology, the driver would be reduced to a point and squirt operator — electronics would change gears and manage traction. If F1 lived up to its claims to be the most technically enabled form of motor sport, it would have died of boredom years ago.
So if we accept that engineers need to be restricted to deliver challenging motor racing — excitement for viewers and participants — we can toss away lots of technology. Aside from safety data, nothing about a racing car should be analysed in real time.
But keep those hybrid engines — the technology is relevant to road cars, and with so many elements the rules can be tweaked to keep engine and chassis developers on their toes: “Next year, 25% more energy can be recovered from the rear axle.”
With the new penalty system for driver infractions I’ll be very surprised if at least one of these two doesn’t end up sitting on the naughty step for a few races. Verstappen has very little experience compared to the usual new F1 drivers who are there on merit. You only have to look at the current grid and think of Massa, Perez, Grosjean, and Maldernado, who in their first couple of F1 seasons had plenty of instances of not making it past the first corner.
I hope I’m proved wrong but somehow I don’t think that I will be.
Hello Joe
I rather like the idea of Red Bull having Toro Rosso as the feeder team and the latter’s policy to give ambitious and successful young drivers the chance to enter F1.
As time goes by, we’ll get to the point when there will enough drivers let go by TR to constitute their very own series…..not sure what we would call it ?
Red Bull surplus to requirement
I like what you did there . .
Formula Dole
I’m also wondering whether the main team will, with Mark and Seb gone in two successive years, start to do the same: keep Dan R and Dan K for a few years (preferably after a WDC each) and then chuck them by the wayside to be replaced by whomever’s in the Toro Rosso at that point (maybe a fifteen-year-old). All part of Red Bull’s plan to flood F1 with its drivers, then pull the plug and all sponsoring.
Well that cheered me up🙂
I think they’ve combined it with Formula 1 Masters and Families and called it Formula E…😉
I feel very disappointed for JEV, as he is without question an extremely talented driver. I think being behind Ricciardo in qualifying when they were at STR together cost him. He raced just as well as, if not better than Ricciardo.
For some reason, I’m more excited by Sainz than Verstappen. They will be fighting tooth and nail to beat the other. But without a known quantity in the next seat to gauge their performance against, it will be difficult for the team to assess their true performance and potential.
Let’s not forget that Carlos was certainly in the frame to replace JEV before Marko snuffled up Verstappen then it looked as if his F1 aspirations were over and he was pretty much resigned to that when out the blue Kyvat was signed to replace the departing Vettel.
I’m sure this is going to be a very entertaining battle what with their speed and inexperience and a good dose of anxiety, to be the best, thrown in, will surely lead to fireworks. A show, I for one, will relish.
Who is going to run the crèche for all these kids.
Come on guys, i cant beleave people are complaining that Sainz is a pay driver when he won the world series! He looked good when i saw him in F3 (although most of the grid was not upto much)and has won formula Renualt NEC title , i am not sure what more he can do to prove he is worth a chance. I will admit he looked terrible in GP3 at silverstone and did nothing in euro F3. But my point is he has won one of the two feeder series to F1 so in my mind deserves a chance.
The eating is in the pudding?
I have no problems with his entry. As you say he is a winner of a feeder series. But what happened to bedding these young guns in a little? a year or 2 as a test or development driver would not hurt in the least. I’m pretty sure if you asked people who entered the sport at a more regular pace they would admit to being better prepared. I have an active imagination and can well imagine the sensory overload of sitting on the grid in Oz next year.
I think the problem you have in this respect is the lack of in-season testing. back in the day when teams could do as much as they liked, test drivers were always able to clock some time in the car. Today it’s mainly simulator work, the in-season days and if lucky a couple of FP1 sessions, which many teams prefer their race drivers to use. for set-up etc.
Therefore when you enter a test driver role, you’re probably not committing yourself to another series, therefore you won’t have as much opportunity to impress. Verstappen and Sainz have shown skills – albeit in a lower formula – and are therefore plucked to have a go in a team that thrives on that very thing. Look at the drivers that have come from Toro Rosso – Vettel and Riccardo – even Alonso (when it was Minardi).
Still, it’s a shame Jolyon Palmer hasn’t got a place on the grid.
So sorry Felix da Costa never got the drive…😦