McLaren keeping Sainz ‘fully involved’

Despite the fact that he is leaving for Ferrari at the end of the season, Carlos Sainz is being kept fully in the loop at McLaren.

It was announced before the 2020 campaign had even begun that Sainz would be leaving for the Italian team at the end of it.

Often when a driver has a future move arranged, his team will start to keep things from him to ensure he doesn’t take information to his new employers.

However, McLaren isn’t doing so, and don’t plan to until the day he leaves the team.

“At the moment, Carlos is still fully involved in everything we are doing here at the track and also back home,” team principal Andreas Seidl said as per Motorsport.com.

“We clearly have the philosophy that that’s the right way forward in order to get the maximum out of Carlos also. In the end, we share the same goals this year.

“He wants to get maximum points and results, and the same is happening on our side. That is valid for us as a team. And to be honest, I think we will go ahead like this until the end of the season.”

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McLaren isn’t the only team adopting this somewhat unusual philosophy.

Daniel Ricciardo will be replacing Sainz at McLaren, but Cyril Abitebould, the team principal of his current team, Renault, isn’t worried about keeping things from the Aussie due to the stable regulations in place for next season.

“It would make absolutely no sense, and Daniel will be fully involved in the development process of the car also because the car is more-or-less frozen between this year and next year,” Abiteboul said.

“Also McLaren will have to use all their tokens on pure chassis-engine integration, so [there will be] no performance development there.

“That will give us the opportunity to work extremely normally with Daniel. Obviously, he won’t be exposed to 2022, but frankly, we would not do that anyway, because it’s still a bit far away from a driver perspective.”

As it stands, both Ricciardo and Sainz will be heading to their new teams in top form. The former is P7 in the Driver’s Championship with 53 points, while Sainz has 12 less but a podium to his name this year thanks to a P2 finish at the Italian Grand Prix.

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