Carlos Sainz receives clear F1 2025 advice as Mercedes and Red Bull rumours rubbished

David Coulthard has issued some sage advice for Carlos Sainz as the Spaniard weighs up his F1 options for the 2025 season.

Sainz is very much the cork in the bottle for the driver market ahead of 2025, with the current Ferrari driver trying to find the best seat for himself after being dropped from the Scuderia’s line-up.

David Coulthard urges Carlos Sainz to chase performance

Sainz is without a drive for next year due to Ferrari being unable to pass up the opportunity to sign Lewis Hamilton, with the Spaniard having to give up his seat despite performing strongly – to the point he was briefly the only non-Red Bull driver to have won a Grand Prix in over a year courtesy of his Singapore victory last season.

But with many teams having available cockpits next year, Sainz has revealed he’s had offers from up and down the grid – and he’s taking his time deciding, to the point where other drivers have been unable to reveal their own plans for next year, as teams wait for Sainz to make a decision.

Amongst his considerations are trying to find a cockpit that will give him a strong 2025, as well as give him confidence of competitiveness come 2026 when the regulations are refreshed with new engine and aero rules being brought in.

This means having to weigh up taking a big step backward next season in order to take on a ‘project’ from 2026, but 13-time Grand Prix winner David Coulthard believes Sainz should just take whatever seat offers him the best chance of strong results in 2025 rather than trying to figure out all the permutations.

This comes amidst rumours that Sainz has turned down one-year deal offers with the likes of Mercedes, a team performing strongly, due to the possibility of being usurped by Kimi Antonelli for 2026 if he was to commit to the Brackley-based squad for a single season when multiple-year offers have reportedly been extended to him by the likes of Audi and Williams.

“In modern Formula One, I would definitely – with his talent and his age and everything – I would go for performance,” Coulthard told the Beyond the Grid podcast when discussing Sainz’s prospects for next season.

“I would go for whatever car next year I believe is going to give me performance on track.”

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Coulthard said that rumours around some teams’ preparations for 2026 ultimately mean nothing at this point, as it’s simply impossible to gauge who has got a handle on the new regulations until the season actually starts in a little over 18 months time.

“I would not think about 2026 because nobody knows,” he said.

“Whatever the rumours are – Mercedes has the best engine rumours, Red Bull has a problem, all of these things…

“I saw a quote from Christian [Horner] this weekend going, ‘Well, the guy that’s leaving to go to Ferrari (Hamilton) must have seen [something]…’

“So all of that is nobody truly knows until the car goes out on the track. Because, if they truly knew, then at the highest level, all of those teams would be delivering the same car in terms of performance because they’ve all got the same regulations.”

Coulthard, who parted ways with McLaren at the conclusion of 2004 and didn’t immediately sign a new deal until committing to the burgeoning Red Bull project, said he’d have had no issues signing a one-year deal with a competitive team for 2005 – even if there hadn’t been any assurances for the years after that.

“Yes, if I’d had a one-year opportunity in a team that was winning Grands Prix, or looking like they were on the cusp of that – 100 percent,” he said, when asked what choice his younger self might have made.

“Because you go there and assert yourself, deliver, and they’ll want to keep you.

“Now, I know you could say ‘Well, Carlos was doing a good job, he’s winning Grands Prix and they didn’t want to keep him’.

“The problem he had was that a seven-time world champion wanted to go to Ferrari and that was just too good a marketing story first of all, because the only marketing that Ferrari does is motor racing.

“You’ll never see a TV advert, you’ll never see a magazine advertisement. They only advertise through motorsport and, already, Ferrari got a boost and their share price got a boost when Hamilton signed.

“So I think for Carlos, you’ve got to go for performance. Look at Valtteri [Bottas], he was winning Grands Prix and not being embarrassed alongside Lewis. He went to Sauber and he’s been anonymous since – not because he’s forgotten how to drive.

“But the car just doesn’t allow you to show yourself.”

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