Charles Leclerc may be the faster driver, but Carlos Sainz is the “happier” driver, according to Marc Surer: Did Ferrari make the right decision?
Did Ferrari keep the wrong driver as Lewis Hamilton’s teammate? With the seven-time world champion’s move from Mercedes to Maranello, it was clear that only one of the two current drivers would be able to stay. That would be Charles Leclerc, who has been seen as the future of Ferrari for many years but has still not made the big breakthrough
Carlos Sainz, on the other hand, will have to leave the team at the end of the current season and will inevitably join the Williams team, which is currently in second-last place in the championship. But was this the right decision?
In an interview on the Formula1.de YouTube channel, expert Marc Surer assesses Ferrari’s choice and believes that Sainz would actually have been “the safer bet”. Because: “Charles Leclerc is the faster driver of the two, but Sainz is the luckier one,” says the Swiss.
What he means by this is that Leclerc has the higher basic speed, “but if something is not one hundred percent right, then he is nowhere,” says Surer. You could see that in Austria (eleventh place) and in Great Britain (14th place), for example. Sainz’s worst result, on the other hand, is sixth place
More mentally stable than Leclerc
“He kind of gets to the heart of the matter. He wins races where he shouldn’t actually win,” says Surer, referring to Australia, where Sainz was able to take his chance – or to Singapore last year, when the Spaniard was the only one to beat Red Bull in 2023.
“Even now, he has finished on the podium from time to time, where people have said: ‘Oh, where did he come from?’ And that’s exactly what Sainz is, he gets it right,” says the Swiss
For him, Sainz also seems more mentally stable than Leclerc, who drives at an “extremely high level” but always makes mistakes. “He is really always on the limit and perhaps also more at the limit with his nerves than Sainz, who seems more relaxed.”
For Surer, Sainz would therefore be the safe bet, but he still supports Ferrari’s decision: “If you want to be world champion, you have to take the fastest driver. And Leclerc is the faster one,” he says.
Duell at eye level with Alexander Albon?
And while the Monegasque will have to take on Lewis Hamilton in 2025, Surer is curious to see what the team duel at Williams will look like. There, Sainz will face Alexander Albon, who has been highly praised in recent years, but honestly did not have the highest standards with Nicholas Latifi and Logan Sargeant.
“Basically, they will be on a similar level in terms of speed,” he believes, but Sainz will still come out on top in the end – simply because he is a so-called “lucky driver”.
“That’s a quote from Bernie Ecclestone, who said that there are ‘fast drivers and lucky drivers’, and for me Sainz is such a ‘lucky driver’, and that’s why he will probably get the better results,” says the expert.
