Martin Brundle says it is a “travesty” Carlos Sainz won’t be with a top team next season having again proven his credentials in Abu Dhabi.

Sainz was runner-up at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as he bid farewell to Ferrari, the Spaniard’s long goodbye officially over.

Carlos Sainz signed with Williams after failing to land a top-team drive

Sainz was informed even before the first wheel had turned in the 2024 season that his Ferrari days were numbers as the team had signed Lewis Hamilton as Charles Leclerc’s F1 2025 team-mate.

Sainz rose to the challenge of putting himself in the shop window, the first of the team-mates to win a Grand Prix as he heroically won in Melbourne just 16 days after an appendectomy.

He added a second victory in Mexico while his P2 at the Yas Marina circuit on Sunday night was his ninth podium of the campaign.

It may be his last for a while as the 30-year-old is swapping red for blue in 2025 having signed a multi-year deal with Williams.

Although he was linked to Red Bull and Mercedes in the months after the Ferrari announcement, talks up and down didn’t yield a contract with Sainz deciding he wouldn’t wait any longer and signing with Williams.

“Sainz was an impressive second as he is now obliged to depart the team for the incoming Lewis Hamilton, and Leclerc did make his way to a mighty third place from the back row of the grid,” Brundle wrote in his latest Sky F1 column.

“Sainz has a perfect attitude and mindset about heading to current midfielders Williams, but it’s a travesty that he’s not in either a Mercedes or Red Bull next season.”

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Sainz has previously spoken of his “hurt” at being snubbed by Formula 1’s top teams having been in conversation with both Red Bull and Mercedes.

Mercedes though, always had an eye on signing their junior driver Kimi Antonelli as Hamilton’s replacement while Red Bull had Sergio Perez and Daniel Ricciardo in the mix.

“It hurt at the time, we all have egos, and I have a driver ego, and I couldn’t understand it at the time,” Sainz told Sky F1 last month.

“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.”

Sainz covered his first official laps with Williams at the Yas Marina circuit on Tuesday when he joined his new team for the post-season test. He was second quickest behind his 2024 Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc. The gap was a mere 0.125s.

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