How do you sleep at night?
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Good decision or could it backfire?
So Sainz obviously moved around a lot. Toro Rosso in 2015, then left towards the end of 2017 to Renault, then to McLaren for 2019, and now Ferrari since 2021. He was replaced at TR by Gasly, and Kvyat (his 2017 teammate) was replaced not long after by Hartley.
When Ricciardo left RB in 2018, it was Gasly that was promoted from Toro Rosso for the 2019 season, but what if Sainz was still at TR? Okay so Kvyat got replaced anyway, so a good chance Gasly would still get the TR seat, but Sainz was great at TR. He outscored Kvyat in 2016 and 2017, and scored points in the 2017 car which Gasly and Hartley both failed to do. There's a decent chance he could have kept that form going into 2018, beaten Gasly there, and then be the one to be promoted to RB in 2019.
On the one hand, maybe he wouldn't have lasted so long in TR anyway, considering how many young drivers RB bring up through the ranks who would want a go, but Kvyat first started with TR in 2014 and he was racing with Alpha Tauri until 2020. That's 6 years in the Red Bull ecosystem and only one of those was racing for the main team.
I think it's quite a fun what-if since we've seen Sainz outperform numerous teammates and even managed to outscore Leclerc last year. Maybe he would have been the no.2 Red Bull driver to really give Max a run for his money, but we'll never know.
He has gained a total of 17 places on the first lap after safety car restarts since his move to Red Bull.
Another fun fact, in the same time period, Lewis Hamilton has lost a position three times. All of those times were to Max Verstappen (Brazil 2019, Portugal 2021 and of course Abu Dhabi 2021).
Lewis has made up a place in 5 races in that period (Bahrain 2017, Baku 2018, Germany 2019, Brazil 2019 and Austria 2021).
In terms of his whole career, Max lost 1 position in each of the restarts in Russia and USA 2015, while spinning out at the restart in Silverstone 2015.
And yes, isolation has made me extremely bored!
