Carlos Sainz v Lewis Hamilton: One snapshot of unfair judgement

Carlos Sainz secured a podium for Williams before Lewis Hamilton managed one with Ferrari. The shock! The horror! And more to the point, the intrigue!

But is it really?

Carlos Sainz v Lewis Hamilton is by no means decided

In the week and a bit since Carlos Sainz put his Williams FW47 on the podium in Baku, racing from second to third (although a cynic or two would say dropping from second to third after being gifted P2 on the grid in a red-flagged palaver of a qualifying session), almost every pundit (the paid and unpaid) has questioned Ferrari’s decision to drop Sainz for Lewis Hamilton in the off-season.

“Every time he left a team, that team went downhill. Every time. And it’s the same with Ferrari now,” proclaimed Jacques Villeneuve on a betting site as he explained that Sainz “maybe was just a few hundredths” slower than his teammates, but that said teammate was quicker “thanks to the work that Sainz was doing”.

Guenther Steiner called it buyer’s remorse as he told The Red Flag podcast: “I’m sure that some of the guys there are feeling regret, because Ferrari finished eighth and ninth in Baku. Carlos Sainz, now with Williams, finished third.”

As for the less sensational, that came from former Aston Martin strategist Bernie Collins.

“He believes,” she told Sky F1. “He’s really bought into the project. The conversations that James [Vowles, team principal] and him had in order to get him to go to Williams, in order to convince him that the project was there, the resource was there, they were going to push in the right direction.

“Clearly, Carlos Sainz has fully bought into that, and he thinks that Williams can be back at the front. Believes he can, and believes he’s a crucial part of the jigsaw to make that happen, and that’s very powerful in a driver team combination.”

F1 2025: The season’s winners and losers

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In sharp contrast, Hamilton was vilified, with Steiner saying “obviously” that because of the “unrest he brings into the team and around the team, is it a worthwhile investment? Maybe not.” And the financial investment for the seven-time champion, he’s “pretty sure it’s a lot higher.”

Former Ferrari chief Luca di Montezemolo, while not mentioning Hamilton, made it clear to Reuters what his preferred line-up – sans Max Verstappen it should be noted – would be.

“Sainz and Leclerc were a very good couple… If tomorrow morning I will be obliged to go to work in Ferrari, in one week I have clear in my mind who to put in different positions.”

It would suggest that there is consensus that Sainz was a better driver for Ferrari than Hamilton has been.

But is that a fair assessment?

Yes, Sainz has featured on the front row of a grand prix grid and Hamilton has not. And yes the Williams driver has sprayed the post grand prix champagne and the seven-time World Champion has yet, but that’s one race weekend, one snapshot in a 24-race season, in which Hamilton has 121 points, Sainz just 31.

Hamilton is down on his teammate by 165 to 121, just less than a quarter, while Sainz is down on Alex Albon by 70 to 31, and that is more than half.

Changing teams in Formula 1 isn’t easy; it’s a new car, new operation, new steering wheel, and new engine. For Sainz, his four years with Ferrari were the longest he’d spent with a single team. For Hamilton, his 12 years with Mercedes were his longest, while his 18 using Mercedes engines were monumental.

Imagine you moved from a left-side indicator to a right-side after four years… but now you’re doing it after 18 years. So every time you turned, you switched on your windscreen wipers.

It’s simplifying it, I accept that, but it is a major change that takes months, if not years, to become part of your unconscious routine.

David Coulthard says he struggles to “buy into the whole change your culture”, telling Channel 4: “It’s a race car, right, left, throttle, brake.

“Yes, there’s another way of terminology, but a power unit is a power unit. Downforce is downforce. When you break this sport down to its simplest forms, it’s about human and machine, and the very best at their peak are able to master that.”

Which begs the question, is Sainz in his peak but Hamilton beyond his?

Hamilton has never adapted to the ground-effect aero cars, but neither did Ferrari, nor Mercedes, nor anyone on the grid bar Red Bull’s Adrian Newey – and arguably McLaren more latterly.

Next year, things could be very different with new engines, new cars, and active aerodynamics. The cars will be shorter, lighter, and fight-ier, so the Baku miracle from Sainz or Isack Hadjar’s third in Zandvoort actually counts for anything.

So much so, even Sainz had little to say on beating Hamilton to the F1 podium in 2025.

“What everyone else does is not my business, to be honest,” Sainz said of the comparison between his fortunes and those of Hamilton.

“What I care about is that the first opportunity that I had to score a podium with Williams, and the first opportunity Williams had to score a podium, we took it, we scored it, and there it is.”

He also pointed out that, “I think out of everyone that’s changed teams — which is not an easy task nowadays — I’ve been very competitive from the first race, very quick, but I didn’t have results with me. I didn’t have results to prove to myself, the team, and everyone that some good things were about to come.

“But, in the end, they did. I think life has taught me many times that this sometimes happens — that you have a run of misfortune or bad performances, but then suddenly life gives you back if you keep working hard with something really sweet like this.”

Whether life gives Hamilton a podium this season he cannot say right now, but what he does know is that down in sixth place in the standings, it doesn’t mean much.

The 40-year-old believes qualifying is the key to securing a podium result. He has only qualified inside the top ten twice in the last five grand prix weekends.

“It would be nice, but it’s not really going to change much for me,” he said.

“If we qualify better, we’re going be in a much better position to race,” Hamilton added.

“I mean, I would give anything for an upgrade, but obviously we don’t have that to focus on next year’s car, so we just have to do better in optimising and execution.”

Either or, P3 in a race or P2 in the championship, only one things really matters for Hamilton at Ferrari and that’s P1 – first in a grand prix, and then in a championship.

If Sainz gains either of those before the Ferrari driver, then – and only then – we can talk about shock, horror and intrigue.

Read next: Has Ferrari really gone ‘downhill’ since Sainz left? Villenueve thinks so