Red Bull overlooked the “obvious” pick as their replacement for Sergio Perez, that being four-time grand prix winner Carlos Sainz.

That is the opinion of former Hispania and Lotus driver turned Sky F1 pundit Karun Chandhok, who is at a loss as to why Red Bull has not turned to Sainz.

Carlos Sainz deemed ‘obvious’ Red Bull choice

A product of the Red Bull driver programme and previously a Toro Rosso driver, Sainz was on the market in the latest F1 ‘silly season’ after Ferrari made the decision to bring in seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton for F1 2025 and beyond.

However, with Mercedes overlooking Sainz for their vacancy, Red Bull did the same, with Liam Lawson instead stepping up from Racing Bulls for F1 2025 after Sergio Perez departed Red Bull Racing.

But, speaking ahead of that announcement, Chandhok proposed that Sainz – who has joined Williams on a multi-year deal – was the “obvious candidate” to partner ex-Toro Rosso team-mate Max Verstappen at Red Bull from F1 2025.

“I still don’t understand why they didn’t sign Sainz,” said Chandhok on the Sky F1 podcast.

“This thing of, oh, Max doesn’t want him, or the fathers don’t get along. Come on. It’s been a decade, and they’re at completely different stages of their lives.

“Max is now a four-time World Champion, and really that deference to whether their dads don’t get on or whether Max doesn’t want him, at the end of the day, they’ve lost the Constructors’ World Championship because the second car wasn’t scoring as well as the second Ferrari or the second McLaren on any given weekend, and you have to have the best two drivers.

“And to me, Sainz was the obvious, obvious candidate.”

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Sainz has openly admitted that at the time, it hurt his “ego” as a driver to be overlooked by Mercedes and Red Bull, with Mercedes knowing before F1 2024 began that they needed to make a move in the driver market, while talk of Perez leaving Red Bull stretched all the way back to the F1 2024 summer break.

Put to him by Sky F1 that the doors to Mercedes and Red Bull closed rather quickly on him, Sainz replied: “I’ve definitely come to peace, and I am a true believer that if I’m not going there, it’s because life just doesn’t want me to be there – there’s something else coming after that, that will actually turn out to be good.

“It hurt at the time, we all have egos, and I have a driver ego, and I couldn’t understand it at the time.

“I still personally cannot understand certain choices that people have done, but at the same time, it creates even more of a challenge in me, and it even makes me more excited for Williams.

“Williams is the one that has invested in me, that have backed me up from the beginning, the ones that came to me a full year ago, and that actually makes me super excited.

“I said, ‘I want to give to these guys what they’ve given to me. Give back to them this trust and this belief in me’.

“I cannot wait to go there and, together with them, build something good.”

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