On the driver market… Sauber/Audi is going to announce soon who will accompany Hulkenberg from 2025. It won’t be @Carlossainz55 because he decided not to accept the offer and miss the deadline he had to reply. Accepting it would have given him peace of mind, as well as a good financial offer, but he preferred to take a risk to see if he could find a place in a more competitive team. Main options: Red Bull if there is movement (it seems that there is) and Mercedes. They are talking, but there is nothing yet. Mercedes wants Verstappen, who is undoubtedly the key piece of this puzzle.
(Translated with DeepL.com)
Original in spanish:
Sobre el mercado de pilotos... Sauber/Audi va a anunciar pronto quién acompañará a Hulkenberg a partir de 2025. No séra
@Carlossainz55
porque él decidió no aceptar la oferta y dejar pasar la fecha límite que tenía para contestar. Aceptarla le hubiera dado tranquilidad, además de una buena oferta económica, pero ha preferido arriesgar por ver si encuentra hueco en un equipo más competitivo. Opciones principales: Red Bull si hay movimiento (parece que lo hay) y Mercedes. Están hablando, pero aún no hay nada. Mercedes quiere a Verstappen que es, sin lugar a dudas, la pieza clave de este puzzle.
I wonder how much driver shuffle will really happen. There is an open seat at Merc, one at Hass and one at Sauber. I don’t think there are any others at the moment.
Right now we have Sainz, Bottas, and Zhou looking for a seat. I don’t really think Bottas or Zhou will find a seat unless Hass decides to pick one up. Though they have already suggested that Bearman might drive for them(I hope he gets something better). I think Sainz will find a seat, but at the moment he really only has Merc as a good option. I guess we will see if they are interested.
If there isn’t a big driver shuffle he might not get something he likes or maybe nothing if he keeps holding out for something better.
Alpine and Haas have both seats open (Alpine may want to keep their drivers, but do they want to stay? Questionable). The second seats at RBR, RB and Williams are also open (with one RB seat taken by Lawson, the other one might end up being Tsunoda but who knows).
But yeah, Sainz pretty much only would want the seat at Mercedes or RBR. Everything else is a downgrade.
https://www.planetf1.com/news/f1-2025-driver-line-up-confirmed-grid I found this so there are more open seats than I thought, though some of them seem to be open due to the end contracts. So it is possible for the current driver to keep the seat. And yep are only two seats that Sainz might actually want. I figure if he doesn’t get one of them we might see him at Williams. At least they have heritage and have a good possibility of being best of the rest
I would love to see Stroll get the boot so Sainz and Alonso could be teammates, I bet that would be fun. But we all know that we will see the heat death of the universe before Stroll loses his seat.