Carlos Sainz has shared his thoughts on Ferrari's troubled 2025 Formula 1 season. The SF-25 has not lived up to the expectations to compete for the World Championship. Sainz has asserted that the car is still pretty much where it was in the 2024 (SF-24) season.
The now-Williams racer Sainz drove for Ferrari from 2021 onwards until the end of the 2024 season. He was replaced by seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, ahead of the ongoing F1 season.
The 2025 season is 15 rounds down, and the Fred Vasseur-led team stands at second place in the Constructor's Championship with 260 points. However, the gap to leaders, McLaren, is huge, as the latter is sitting right at the top with 584 points.
The situation is quite similar in the Drivers' Championship as well, with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton in P5 and P6 respectively. In line with how much the team has struggled to compete for titles this year, Carlos Sainz has made comparisons with the previous year's challenger and said:
"Compared to Red Bull and Mercedes, it is more or less where it was last year. The problem is that McLaren has made a huge step, for me it is one of the strongest teams ever seen in F1."
Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc bagged zero points from last week's Dutch Grand Prix race weekend. Both endured DNFs after their separate incidents at the Zandvoort racing circuit. Williams racer Carlos Sainz secured a P13 finish.
F1 pundit believes Ferrari is 'missing Carlos Sainz'
While Carlos Sainz has shared his thoughts on Ferrari's SF-25, the 1997 F1 world Champion, Jacques Villeneuve (now an F1 pundit), belived that the Italian team was missing its former racer.
Villeneuve gave a strange take during the Dutch Grand Prix race weekend:
"Maybe they're missing Carlos Sainz at Ferrari. Ultimately, we're seeing who was working on the team. And we kept saying, every time Carlos joins a team, the team goes up, every time he leaves it, that team goes down. And that happened again. Williams has been going up, Ferrari has been going down."
Sainz has been competing at the top level of motorsports since 2015. Over the years, he has represented teams like Toro Rosso (Racing Bulls), Renault (Alpine), McLaren, Ferrari, and the Williams F1 (current) team.
It is going to be fascinating to see how fruitful Sainz's sting with Williams will eventually pan out. The 2025 F1 has not gone in Sainz's way, as after 15 races, he is in 17th place in the drivers' standings with 16 points. Sainz's teammate Alex Albon is in eighth with 64 points.