Carlos Sainz: I hate talking about myself

In the closing stages of the season, Carlos Sainz is assured of more attention, as he only has six final races left with Ferrari, after which he will continue his career at Williams. However, during a nice interview with the official website of the championship, this was not discussed at all and Carlos answered questions while playing table football…

Q: Can you somehow describe yourself in three words?
Carlos Sainz: I would say this: “thinking, rational and… (here he scores a goal) who can play football well!

Question: What is your most important quality?
Carlos Sainz: Actually, I can’t stand talking about myself. I don’t like it when people ask me questions like that. I believe there are a lot of people in the paddock who analyze my actions and know what I really am. So let others answer such questions.

I can only repeat what other people say about me: thinking, rational, able to build tactics… In general, I don’t know, something like that.

Here Pierluigi Della Bona, Carlos’ trainer, joins the conversation: “Carlos is a real hard worker and his best quality is courage. He never gives up, keeps fighting and tries even harder. I think these are all qualities that are very useful for any racer.

Question: How did you come to fall in love with Formula 1? How did it all start?
Carlos Sainz: From the fact that in my youth I watched the races with Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen, when they were fighting for victories in the early 2000s, and it was an incredibly interesting period in the history of Formula 1. When I was 10 years old was old, they were my idols.

Question: Now comes a difficult question: since when did you pass the driver’s license exam?
Carlos Sainz: Immediately. That one. on the first try. There were no problems, but I guess this is to be expected from a professional racer.

Question: Who is your best friend in the paddock?
Carlos Sainz: If we talk about people who don’t work at Ferrari, because of course I have a lot of friends in the team… But ‘friend’ is quite a strong word that I wouldn’t like to say too often. But I still want to say that in the paddock I have the best relationship with Lando Norris and with some of my racing engineers. Including Tom Stallard and Riccardo Adami.

Q: If you were to organize your dream football team, which riders would you invite to join it?
Carlos Sainz: I think Fernando Alonso and I would play for such a team because we are the best! You can call Pierre Gasly, I saw him playing quite well. By the way, I would also call Pierluigi, he is an excellent defender, he plays at an almost professional level.

Question: If you were to create a menu with your favorite food, what would it look like as a starter, main course and dessert?
Carlos Sainz: Let’s start with a piece of pizza, the main course should be a good hamburger and for dessert I prefer tiramisu, ice cream, cheesecake or pancakes. I love pancakes!

Q: What was the best advice you ever received?
Carlos Sainz: When I started karting, I was 10-11 years old. At that time I was too exemplary, too polite towards other riders and always believed that they were all my friends. And then my father said to me: “In this sport you bite, or they bite you. So it is better to start biting immediately.”

Since then I have tried to follow this advice and act aggressively and bite.

Q: What was the worst advice?
Carlos Sainz: Perhaps the advice is to be careful. After all, this means that you have to slow down. For example, if you follow this advice in difficult circumstances, you will inevitably fall behind. And I always want to attack with full force.

I show my best results when I don’t pay attention to the situation, but just attack, just strive for victory. This is the most correct approach in any sport.

Question: If you had the opportunity to try yourself in another profession for a day, what would you choose?
Carlos Sainz: I would try myself as a strategist, but that’s for one day. And for a whole month I would like to become a team leader to understand what it is like. In general, it would be interesting to try myself in different professions, for example, to become a racing engineer who communicates with the racer by radio, because I know what the racer needs and wants.

Question: What would you like to be doing in five years?
Carlos Sainz: At this moment I would have already become world champion or would have been champion in five minutes, but for that you have to be in the right team at the right time.