Carlos Sainz says that he knew Charles Leclerc would never be the driver to be replaced by Ferrari when the prospect of Lewis Hamilton became realistic.

The Spaniard had been eyeing up a contract renewal at Ferrari as he headed into the F1 2024 season, only for the Scuderia to sign Lewis Hamilton to take his seat instead.

Carlos Sainz: It was never going to be Charles Leclerc

The disappointment of realising that there would be no room for Sainz at Ferrari for F1 2025 left the Spaniard reeling initially.

Coming off the back of a 2023 season in which Sainz was the only non-Red Bull race winner, and his ability to consistently take the fight to Leclerc, Sainz looked a near-certainty to be retained in his Ferrari seat for 2025.

But fate decided against it, as Ferrari couldn’t resist the allure of signing seven-time F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton when the former Mercedes man made himself available to Ferrari and signaled his interest in switching sides.

The alignment of the sport’s most historic and successful team with the most successful driver in history – a driver seeking a record-breaking eighth world title – proved too good an opportunity for Ferrari to decline, even though it meant dropping Sainz.

Through no fault of his own, Sainz went into the F1 2024 season knowing he had an uncertain future as he began the process of finding a new home, but the Spaniard proved extremely professional and refused to allow the bad news to affect his relationship or his performances.

Appearing on the Beyond the Grid podcast, Sainz said he fully understood the logic of Ferrari choosing Hamilton over him.

“100 percent. I understand and I think I understood it almost right from the beginning,” he said.

“I think, if it had been someone else, I would have taken a lot longer to understand.

“Charles has been the project of Ferrari ever since he’s been a junior driver. He’s been the centre of the project for many years, I arrived at Ferrari more as a substitute of [Sebastian] Vettel, almost a bit… not by chance, but circumstantial, rather than Charles who has been there forever.

“So I understood I had to be, in a way, the one being replaced, and I understood it from the beginning. I just obviously didn’t agree so much at the time. But you end up agreeing and you end up getting on with it.”

Just weeks after losing his seat with Ferrari, Sainz was back on the top step of the podium. Recovering quickly from an appendectomy after falling ill in Saudi Arabia, Sainz won the Australian Grand Prix, and said the race had been a very emotional moment for him after the lows of the previous weeks.

“I think I said on the radio in Australia that this life is such a roller coaster,” he said.

“I remember being very emotional on that Australian Grand Prix podium because there was my dad there, there was obviously my manager, my girlfriend, and everyone who’s been next to me, I was obviously thinking about my mom, and they’ve all seen me suffer during the winter.

“When I say suffer, I don’t mean I was crying behind closed doors, but I was actually hurt. I was hurt because I didn’t expect it. I wasn’t prepared for that kind of news.

“I was a bit in shock for a while, and then I regrouped and got training again.

“But I remember after that win in Australia, thinking about how lucky I am of the people that I have around me, supporting me and giving me that inner strength, to overcome what it was at the time, a tough moment that, now when I look back at it, I’m almost like happy, proud that it happened, because it made me a much better driver and a much better athlete in general.”

While Sainz kept his professionalism and refused to lash out at Ferrari despite his misfortune, the Spaniard said he had been extremely angry when the news of Hamilton’s arrival first became known.

“I could sit here and say, ‘No, I wasn’t angry with anyone’, but, at the time when they give you this news, you’re angry,” he said.

“You don’t understand it. You curse, you don’t understand anything that has happened to you and, obviously, you think everything in your life is terrible and you don’t understand.

“But then time cures everything, and you start to accept certain things, and you try to see everything with a lot more of a relative mind, and you start to comprehend, adapt, and forgive and forget, and get on with life.

“Just get on with it. I remember I kept telling myself to just get on with it and just do your thing. It is something that you need to see more relative as time goes by.”

While his relationship with team boss Fred Vasseur and CEO John Elkann remained intact, Sainz revealed how he had responded to the bad news and how he offered his assurances that he would continue to work as diligently as ever.

“I’ve never backed off. I’ve always said this is what I think. In the same way that I told them I understood it, I explained my feelings,” he said.

“I’m not going to tell you here what I said, probably that’s something I’m never going to say.

“But I told them what I thought and moved on and promised them that I was going to give my absolute best for Ferrari, even though all this has happened in the last year, and I was going to keep proving to them that I’m still a big asset for Ferrari, and that’s what I’ve been focusing on doing ever since.”

With Vasseur having left the door open for a possible return for Sainz in the future, the Spaniard said he’s amenable to the idea – should life take him in that direction. Having found a new home with Williams, Sainz is embarking on a very different career challenge as he attempts to help the former behemoth of the sport become a race winner and title challenger once again – meaning Ferrari won’t be on his mind much.

“I don’t see why not,” he said of the possibility of a return.

“At the same time, I cannot see it happening anytime soon, for the moment. But yeah, life is long. I’m 30, and you see drivers at 42 in Formula 1.

“So, if I am in F1 for as long as that, who tells you that in the next 10 years, Ferrari might need my services again in the future?

“This doesn’t mean I wish for it to happen, or I’m looking forward to it, or anything like that. I have a very big target in my head now, which is help Williams to to bring them back to the front of the field. But, yeah, I don’t think about it too much.”