Andrew: The driver market is unusually open this year. Yes, both seats at Ferrari and McLaren are taken, but Red Bull, Mercedes and Aston Martin all have at least one vacant, as do most of the teams in the back half of the grid, of which Sauber is the most attractive in the long term. as it transforms into Audi by 2026.
Sainz will be at the top of most people's list – he's too good not to be. But its appeal is less than it might seem because of the other drivers in the picture – most notably Fernando Alonso and Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
You might think that Sainz would fit in well with Red Bull, Mercedes or Aston Martin, for example. And Audi – as Sauber will become in 2026 – is certainly interested.
But there were tensions between Red Bull, Max Verstappen and Sainz when they were teammates at Toro Rosso.
Mercedes have Verstappen in their sights – should he become available, Antonelli – their protégé in Formula 2 and then Alonso, in that order.
And Aston Martin wants to keep Alonso and has already offered him a lucrative new multi-year contract and will only look elsewhere if he moves on. Sainz is, in a sense, a hostage of fate. He will definitely end up somewhere, but the situation is very fluid and therefore difficult to predict.
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