Carlos Sainz has reflected on the difficult period McLaren endured shortly after his departure for Ferrari, admitting that he struggled to understand how his former team had fallen into such serious trouble at the beginning of the 2022 Formula 1 season. The Spaniard believes McLaren’s subsequent recovery demonstrates why a team’s progress should never be judged as a simple, uninterrupted upward curve.
That experience has particular relevance for Carlos Sainz now. Having watched McLaren recover from a major setback and eventually return to championship-winning form, the four-time Grand Prix winner sees the Woking team’s trajectory as a reminder that difficult periods do not necessarily define a project’s long-term potential.
Carlos Sainz remembers McLaren’s troubling start to 2022
Carlos Sainz spent two seasons at McLaren alongside Lando Norris before accepting Ferrari’s offer and moving to Maranello, where he joined Charles Leclerc. His time in Woking established him as a consistent presence towards the front of the midfield, and the team appeared to be making steady progress when he left.
Ferrari had carried out an extensive assessment before selecting the Spaniard for its 2021 line-up, a process Carlos Sainz has since detailed when discussing the analysis behind Ferrari’s decision to sign him.
McLaren initially continued moving forward after his departure. Daniel Ricciardo delivered victory at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, but the picture changed dramatically when Formula 1 introduced its new technical regulations for 2022.
The British team began that season near the back of the field before gradually addressing its problems over the following rounds. For Carlos Sainz, watching a team he knew so well suddenly struggle at that level was difficult to reconcile with the progress he had seen during his own spell there.
Front brake problem caught McLaren out in Bahrain
One of McLaren’s biggest early problems concerned the front brakes. At the time, the team was understood to have encountered a correlation problem between its simulation work and what the car actually experienced on track. The available indications had suggested that the front brake arrangement was satisfactory, only for pre-season running to expose a different reality.
The problem became apparent in Bahrain. Cooler conditions during the earlier Barcelona running had effectively concealed the weakness and left McLaren with an inaccurate impression of where it stood before the opening race.
Speaking to Motorsport.com while discussing McLaren’s development after his departure, Carlos Sainz acknowledged that the team had grown but remembered the difficult spell that followed Daniel Ricciardo’s Monza victory. He recalled being particularly surprised by the unusual front brake overheating problem during the Bahrain tests and admitted that, at the time, he could not understand how McLaren had ended up in such a position.
The contrast was particularly striking given how competitive the team had been during the period when Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris shared the garage. Their performances regularly placed McLaren at the front of the midfield, with the rivalry between the pair providing an important benchmark before the Spaniard moved to Ferrari. Their subsequent careers can also be viewed against examples such as the Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris race-pace comparison after they became rivals.
McLaren recovery changed Carlos Sainz’s perspective
What followed is the part of McLaren’s story that Carlos Sainz now considers particularly significant. The team eventually found a route out of its problems and went on to claim two Constructors’ Championships as well as a Drivers’ Championship for Lando Norris during the final two seasons of the previous regulatory cycle.
For the Spaniard, that recovery illustrates why development trajectories in Formula 1 are rarely linear. Carlos Sainz explained that teams can make major leaps forward but may also experience setbacks along the way, with the overall direction of travel ultimately more important than individual difficult periods.
He maintained that he had always expected McLaren to win again. Carlos Sainz expressed considerable admiration for Andrea Stella and the way the Italian manages a Formula 1 operation, while also praising Zak Brown. He believed the pair were capable of returning the organisation to the front of the grid, even though his own career took a different path when Ferrari offered him the opportunity to move to Maranello.
That switch began a four-season spell alongside Charles Leclerc, with Carlos Sainz establishing himself as a Grand Prix winner for Ferrari. Coverage of his career across McLaren, Ferrari and Williams can be found in ScuderiaFans’ Carlos Sainz archive.
Andrea Stella became central to McLaren’s turnaround
Andrea Stella’s elevation to the team principal role for the 2023 season became one of the defining moments in McLaren’s recovery. The Italian reshaped the team’s working methods and established the organisational framework that would underpin its later success.
McLaren’s rise subsequently became one of the clearest examples of how quickly the competitive order can change when technical development and team structure begin working effectively together. The contrast with Ferrari’s own fortunes has also placed Andrea Stella’s management under greater scrutiny as the two teams have followed very different competitive paths.
For Carlos Sainz, however, the wider lesson is now relevant to Williams rather than Ferrari or McLaren. Having seen his former Woking team suffer a severe setback before recovering and reaching the top of Formula 1, he knows that a difficult phase does not automatically mean a project has reached its limit.
The McLaren experience therefore provides a useful reference point during his current chapter. Progress may arrive in uneven steps rather than through constant improvement, and Carlos Sainz’s confidence in that principle is rooted in watching one of his former teams fall backwards, reorganise and ultimately reach the championship success he had always believed was possible.
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