Carlos Sainz pulls back the curtain on his relationship with Max Verstappen

Before moving to Williams, Carlos Sainz was understood to be in the running for a seat at Red Bull, but many reckoned that Max Verstappen had vetoed the Spaniard's arrival at the team. However, reflecting on his relationship with the Dutchman, Sainz revealed how the two get on well with each other and shared how their pairing would have been one of the strongest on the F1 grid.

Sainz was a part of the Red Bull family in his early days in F1. He made his debut with Toro Rosso in 2015 and was Verstappen's teammate in his rookie year. While the young Dutchman had the upper hand at the end of the season, the two remained relatively close on various metrics.

With the 30-year-old being a free agent for the 2025 season in the first half of 2024, Sergio Perez's struggles brought his candidature to the limelight for a move to Milton Keynes. However, this transfer was not able to see the light of day as Verstappen's status within the team could have been tampered with by such a move, as many reckoned within the paddock.

But, such speculations of a strained relationship with Max Verstappen being the main cause of him not joining the Austrian squad were shot down by Carlos Sainz on the High Performance podcast:

"The only thing I could say is that I genuinely get on well with Max [Verstappen]. This is what people don’t see from the outside. We had a rivalry in our first year in Formula 1 at Toro Rosso, but it was a relatively healthy rivalry in terms of how we used to go about racing. And now we get on really well. If that’s the reason, I don’t understand why they wouldn’t want me next to Max, because I think we would actually be a very strong pairing in Formula 1."

On the other hand, not having any long-term prospects at top teams led Sainz to join Williams for the 2025 season.

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Carlos Sainz is frustrated after his British GP outing

Carlos Sainz at the 2025 F1 Grand Prix of Great Britain race weekend - Source: Getty

Carlos Sainz was slated to be the team leader at Williams as he joined the Grove-based squad. But, the opposite of this has happened as Alex Albon has retained his status of being the major point scorer at the team.

However, not all has been the Spaniard's fault as luck has not been in his favor since the start of the season on multiple occasions. A similar incident took place at the British GP, where Sainz was en route to score a big haul of points, but had an incident with Charles Leclerc, which dragged him out of the top-10.

Reflecting on such unfortunate circumstances in his 2025 campaign, he said in a post-race interview:

"We were in the ideal position to score a top-seven, top-eight result. And suddenly fighting with Charles, he lost control of the car and took me out. Now we need to wait another two weeks to go racing but it gets to a point where it's just extremely frustrating and depressing."

Carlos Sainz has scored 13 points in the first half of the 2025 season.

Edited by Mitali