Carlos Sainz F1 title dream called off in brutal ‘Fisichella, Trulli’ verdict

Carlos Sainz has been called a “good driver” who will simply never sit in the right car to get him a WDC.

As Carlos Sainz heads to Williams for F1 2025, racer and Formula 1 analyst Tom Coronel shares his belief that the Spanish racer will simply never be of World Championship caliber.

In fact, Coronel went so far as to put Sainz on the same level as Giancarlo Fisichella or Jarno Trulli — racers who had skill, but who simply never had the chance to show off that talent in a good car.

Carlos Sainz will ‘never have a serious shot at the F1 title’

Racer and analyst Tom Coronel has been providing driver ratings for the website Formule1.nl, where in his latest article, he’s rated Carlos Sainz with a 7.5 out of 10 for the season.

“At Ferrari it is all very fragile, the mess there a bit,’ Coronel wrote.

“Sainz knows he has to make way for Hamilton at the end of the year. I understand that choice, but he is better than many people think. And he won a race, in Melbourne.

“Sainz was clearly better than Leclerc at the beginning of the season, at the end it was the other way around. But no one knows exactly what goes on there behind the scenes.”

But Coronel also claims he does know something: That Carlos Sainz was once Max Verstappen’s biggest challenger back when the two were racing at Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2015.

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“Max didn’t have the level then that he has now,” Coronel added, “but the same goes for Sainz.

“In my eyes, Sainz is typically one of those drivers who you think: he’s never going to be world champion, but he could have been. A little caliber Fisichella, Trulli.

“I’m seriously a real fan of Carlos Sainz, but I’m afraid he’s never going to have a serious shot at a world title.”

Coronel, though, doesn’t pinpoint the primary issue as being any fault of Sainz’s. Rather, it’s just that Sainz is “ripe to be in a good car, but it’s not available to him. And then you end up in a Williams.”

Though Williams has been improving since the introduction of James Vowles as team principal, there’s still a long way to go before the team could even consider battling for regular points-paying finishes, let alone a championship.

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