Christian Horner has given hope to an unlikely Red Bull reunion with Australian Grand Prix winner Carlos Sainz, after the Spaniard’s brilliant return from surgery in the third race of the Formula One season ended Max Verstappen’s nine-race winning run.
Sainz is set to move on from Ferrari at the end of this season due to the arrival of Lewis Hamilton, and ensured in Melbourne that he is one of the most in-demand drivers for 2025. After the 29-year-old took victory at Albert Park, following Verstappen’s early withdrawal due to a brake issue, Horner said Sainz had been Red Bull’s “nemesis” recently.
When asked whether Red Bull would take Sainz back, Horner replied: “Based on a performance like that, you couldn’t rule any possibility out.”
Sainz was the only non-Red Bull driver to win a Grand Prix last year with a victory in Singapore in September. He got another one on the constructer champions on Sunday. “You’ve had a very fast unemployed driver win today,” Horner said.
The Spaniard was part of the junior Red Bull program and raced for Toro Rosso until he joined Renault in 2017. Ferrari signed Sainz in 2021 to replace Sebastian Vettel. Red Bull’s director Helmut Marko said last month the team would make a decision later in the season about their Mexican driver Sergio Pérez – who finished fifth on Sunday – and that timeframe would not align with that of the in-demand Sainz. But no leading candidate has emerged to pair with Verstappen next year.
Horner said Pérez has had a “great start to the season” and Yuki Tsunoda, the lead driver at affiliate team RB, was a “quick” driver. However, the Red Bull boss said “sometimes you’ve got to look outside the pool”, and “the market is reasonably fluid with certain drivers”.
Ferrari have elected to pair Hamilton with Charles Leclerc next year, forcing Sainz to find another drive. “I don’t feel underrated by people that know about the sport,” Sainz said. “And other people that maybe don’t have any insight as much about the sport? If they want to underrate me, I’m fine with that.”
Leclerc – who finished second behind Sainz – rejected the notion the Spaniard was underrated, saying he was “one of the highest-rated drivers” in Formula One. “I’m not too worried about his future because I’m sure that many, many team principals are – he doesn’t say for sure – they are speaking with him,” Leclerc said.
Sainz missed the last round in Saudi Arabia after having his appendix removed two weeks ago. He credited an intense program of healing for his recovery – including a hyperbaric chamber and an “electromagnetic” machine – which accelerated in the days leading up to the race. “Suddenly when I landed in Australia the feeling was a little better,” he said. “Every 24 hours I was making a lot more progress than those first seven days.”
Australian driver Oscar Piastri finished fourth behind teammate Lando Norris after behind instructed by McLaren team orders to let the English driver pass midway through the race.
Piastri said he was disappointed he couldn’t break a run of 40 years without a local driver on the podium but he understood the reason for the team’s intervention. “Of course, at home, I would have loved to have been able to stay in third but for me that was completely fair,” Piastri said.
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His countryman Daniel Ricciardo finished 12th after starting 18th, continuing his struggles at RB. “I know that I’m on this little process or journey at the moment, and I just need to focus on myself,” Ricciardo said. “If I let any of the noise in, it’s going to distract me from the path I’m on.”
Verstappen’s lap three incident was Red Bull’s first mechanical withdrawal in two years, and was attributed to an issue with the rear right brake caliper.
Horner has been at the centre of controversy in recent weeks after a complaint against him by a team employee. He was cleared but the employee has appealed. On Sunday he said he was “absolutely” comfortable in his role at Red Bull.