“I was at risk of dying”

Carlos Sainz, who debuted in what will be his last season at Ferrari with a third place in Bahrain, was absent from the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix after undergoing appendicitis surgery in Jeddah. However, the Madrid driver tried to race by all means, something that he finally did not do was because he was “at risk of dying».

This is what Carlos Sainz himself has confessed in the podcast Nude Project. Remembering what happened in Practice 1 and 2 of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, he said: «They were the two hardest sessions of my career, on a super physical circuit with very fast corners, I didn’t eat, I had no energy, I sweated more than necessary… I suffered a lot».

«You have appendicitis», the doctors told the Spanish pilot when he arrived at the hospital. «I told them: ‘if you give me something and I have surgery after the race…’. Then they told me no, that I had the risk of something very serious happening to me and I could even die if this thing exploded.», recalled Carlos Sainz.

Without a seat for 2025 due to the arrival of Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari, the Madrid native wanted to vindicate himself. He did it ten years ago to get to Formula 1. «In 2014, Red Bull told me, ‘either you win or we’re not going to bring you into Formula 1’. And even if we win there may not be room.’ When he was about to win the World Series, Red Bull signed Verstappen and I was left without a seat. But I won the championship, another seat opened up and that was for me,” recalled Carlos Sainz.

His father’s advice that changed Carlos Sainz’s life

Looking back, the Ferrari driver still went back even further to reveal his father’s advice that changed his life. «I remember one piece of advice that changed my life a little., because I have always been a somewhat innocent kid and as a child I was guilty of being innocent, of being good. I believed that he was everyone’s friend, that everyone liked him and the motor world is a very bastard world. At 10-11 years old, I went to kart races, me with kids of 11, 12, 13 years old, I thought I was everyone’s friend», Carlos Sainz began by saying about it.

Even so, the rivals showed no mercy towards him. «They gave me a wax… I don’t know if it was because I was Carlos Sainz’s son, they wanted to beat me more, which in a way I understand, because at that age you are trying to stand out, because maybe his parents would tell him that he was the son of Carlos Sainz and that they were going to be watching him, and If you beat Carlos Sainz’s son, you are very goodor you can stand out even more, and they gave me a wax… they hit me from behind, they took me off the track, I couldn’t win,” he acknowledged.

«One day my father sat me down and told me: ‘Carlos, life is very badass and even more so in this sport, either you bite or they bite you, and right now, they are biting you., they are making your life difficult. I know you’re a good kid, that you like being friends with everyone, making friends, playing soccer with other drivers, but here, You either bite or they bite you and when you put that helmet on, make sure you’re the one who bites.», was the advice his father gave him.

«It took me a while to change the chip from being the good kid, to being the one who ‘if I have to take you off the track, I’m going to take you out’. Not because I am the son of and have the fear that people will say that I am a slut on the court, because I still had that fear that everyone would look at me more and think that Carlos Sainz’s son is a slut. You have many mini-complexes, you know that many are looking at you for being the son of a, you may be much more careful,” concluded the pilot of 29 years.