Formula 1 is a sport that is both incredibly fast and often brutally unforgiving. In some cases, it has not crowned the best driver—it has crowned the driver fortunate enough to be sitting in the best car.
Carlos Sainz has expressed a thought-provoking idea with remarkable clarity: if Formula 1 truly wants to determine the best driver in the world, it must break the traditional bond between driver and team. However, as fascinating and revolutionary as his proposal may be, it also exposes several fundamental limitations that reveal just how delicate the Formula 1 ecosystem really is.
The Sainz model: twenty races, twenty truths, twenty contradictions
What Carlos Sainz proposes is a championship made up of 20 races, with every driver competing twice in each car on the grid.
Under such a system, there would no longer be “Ferrari drivers” or “Mercedes drivers.” Instead, there would simply be Formula 1 drivers—independent professionals assigned to teams on a race-by-race basis.
His own words explain the core of the concept:
“I’ve always thought about a format with 20 races where every driver races twice with each car. The driver would belong to Formula 1, not to a team. That way, everyone would have exactly the same chance of winning the World Championship.”
It is an idea that promises absolute fairness. Yet it is precisely within that promise that the first major limitation emerges. Formula 1 was never designed to be perfectly equal; it was built to be competitive, political and deeply rooted in identity. Taking control of drivers away from teams would also remove one of Formula 1’s defining characteristics: its ability to create legends and narratives through the relationship between a driver and a team.
There is also a second challenge: technical complexity. Every Formula 1 car requires adaptation, sensitivity and an understanding of its systems. Two races per car might not be enough for a driver to fully unlock his potential, potentially turning the season into a continuous test session rather than a true championship battle.
Another issue, which may seem less significant at first glance, is logistics. Twenty-two drivers rotating through ten different cars would create an operational nightmare that no current team could realistically support without completely restructuring budgets, personnel and working methods. But perhaps the deepest limitation is cultural. Formula 1 thrives on stories, partnerships and identities. Removing the bond between a driver and a team would erase part of the mythology that makes the sport unique.
The relationship between Ferrari and Michael Schumacher is a perfect example, just as the partnership between Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton defined an entire era of Formula 1. These are stories that continue to be remembered with great nostalgia because they became larger than the results themselves.
Separating brands from drivers: an idea that both inspires and challenges
Yet it is precisely because Sainz’s proposal is so radical that it shines a light on one of modern Formula 1’s blind spots: individual talent is always filtered through the performance of the car.
His model would transform the Drivers’ Championship into an arena where adaptability, intelligence and technical sensitivity become the deciding factors, ensuring that talent is no longer overshadowed by machinery.
At the same time, the points scored with each car would contribute to the Constructors’ Championship, which would finally become an entirely independent competition.
Two separate championships. Two separate truths.
Even within such a clean and logical structure, however, unavoidable limitations remain. Teams would lose the technical continuity that comes from working with the same drivers throughout a season and across multiple years. That progressive relationship allows engineers and drivers to develop a car together, refine communication and build trust over time.
But the issue goes beyond pure performance—it is also about identity. Sponsors would lose the faces that embody their brands, the personalities that transform logos into stories. Fans, perhaps the group most affected of all, would find themselves without the emotional connection that emerges when a driver and a team become inseparable. It would be as though the thread that binds passion and storytelling together had been cut.
That is why Carlos Sainz’s proposal is so intriguing. On one hand, it offers a compelling vision of sporting fairness. On the other, it exposes what Formula 1 simply cannot afford to lose: its narrative identity.
His concept is not really a regulatory proposal. It is a mirror reflecting what Formula 1 could be—and what it can never truly become.
Yet one question naturally emerges from the idea itself, and there does not seem to be a definitive answer:
Do we really want to know who the best driver is, even if discovering the answer means rewriting the very nature of Formula 1?
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