Grading Carlos Sainz Jr.'s Start to Life in Formula 1

Carlos Sainz Jr. may have joined some esteemed names by winning the Formula Renault 3.5 championship in 2014, but little was expected of the Spaniard ahead of his debut season in Formula One.

Partnered with highly rated 17-year-old Max Verstappen, Sainz's task was simply to survive the campaign and ensure his career wasn't destroyed by the boy wonder.

Scuderia Toro Rosso's dithering in deciding between Sainz and Jean-Eric Vergne as Verstappen's team-mate for 2015 suggested even the team themselves had reservations over the 20-year-old's suitability to F1. And considering Red Bull's track record in dumping drivers who don't live up to expectations, we listed Sainz as the driver most likely to lose his seat in 2015 ahead of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. 

How wrong we all were.

Sainz is only seven races into his F1 career but has already made the lot of us seem foolish, producing several eye-catching performances, scoring the majority of Toro Rosso's points and being just as impressive as Verstappen.

After we examined Verstappen's start to life in F1, here's what we make of Sainz's transition to the pinnacle of motorsports.

Sainz has had the edge in terms of one-lap pace at Toro Rosso so far this season, outqualifying Verstappen on five occasions in the opening seven races and reaching Q3 four times.

Much of this, you suspect, is down to Sainz's aggressive, more energetic driving style, which allows him to generate more heat in his tyres and bring his Pirellis up to the optimum temperature.

It is not too dissimilar to the situation at Ferrari, where, as noted by Sky Sports' Mark Hughes, Sebastian Vettel's spiky driving style has given him a clear advantage over the smoother Kimi Raikkonen on Saturdays.

Sainz's style has seen him produce a number of impressive qualifying performances already in his short career, including in Australia, where he qualified eighth on his debut. In Bahrain, he hauled his Renault-engined Toro Rosso to ninth on a power-dependent circuit, challenging Mercedes-powered cars in the process.

In Spain, of course, he secured the team's best qualifying result of the season with fifth, and lest we forget, he beat Verstappen in a straight fight at Monaco, the most driver-dependent track of them all, but he was forced to start from the pit lane after a weighbridge penalty.

Preventing Sainz from earning an even better score here is his misfortune in Malaysia, where he was eliminated from Q2, a victim of the mad rush to set lap times as the rain began to fall on an afternoon when Verstappen sent shock waves through F1 by claiming sixth on the grid.

One can only wonder how Sainz would have fared against Verstappen in wet conditions in Q3 at Sepang.

After the opening seven races of the season, Sainz sits 13th in the drivers' standings with nine points to his name. It is a decent return on balance but, as with Verstappen (six points), there exists an argument that he should have scored a few more.

The Spaniard would probably have finished seventh in Australia had a slow pit stop not cost him heaps of time, with chief race engineer Phil Charles telling Toro Rosso's official website how "software setting" problems left him vulnerable to those behind.

In China, an early spin on hard tyres in low-grip conditions—the only notable mistake he has made this season—handicapped his race, with his misery compounded when a gearbox problem left him stranded on the back straight for a period, putting him out of contention for points.

His chances of stealing a point from the Bahrain GP, meanwhile, were ended when a loose wheel forced him to pull over at the side of the track, preventing him from capitalising on his superb qualifying effort.

That has been the story of Sainz's season in racing conditions, as the Spaniard has lived in the shadow of Verstappen.

According to F1 Fanatic, he has led 56 fewer laps—almost the equivalent of a race distance—than his team-mate in grands prix this season, highlighting that this is an area with room for improvement.

But in modern F1, there are ways and means to get around a general lack of pace in races...

Considering his ragged style, you would normally expect Sainz's raw speed to come at the cost of tyre conservation, especially for a driver with such a lack of experience.

But that hasn't been the case, with Sainz managing his tyres with great expertise in three races in particular.

After qualifying 15th in Malaysia, he utilised a two-stop strategy, which included an unbeaten 23-lap final stint on the hard tyres, to earn eighth place and his second consecutive points finish.

Following his poor start from fifth in the grid in Spain, which saw him drop to 11th place by Lap 7, Sainz recovered by spending 28 laps on the hard tyres—longer than any other driver and four laps more than Verstappen—setting him up for a late-race charge into the points.

He also spent most time on a single tyre compound in Monaco, where after starting from the pit lane Sainz completed a rapid 12-lap stint on super-softs before spending the remaining 66 laps on the soft tyres, salvaging 10th place in a race where a poor starting position is supposed to ruin a driver's afternoon.

Sainz's ability to protect his rubber seems to defy conventional wisdom to the point that even when the race weekend appears to be falling away from him, he can still find a way of securing a fine result.

It's been difficult for Sainz to truly stand out alongside a driver who is already becoming one of the most spectacular overtakers in the business.

Indeed, while Verstappen's season has been defined by his forceful, late-on-the-brakes lunges down the inside of other cars, it's difficult to recall a single outstanding pass by Sainz, with his move on Daniil Kvyat in the latter stages of the Spanish GP perhaps his most memorable manoeuvre.

It is, then, perhaps a little fairer to judge Sainz on how clean he has been in wheel-to-wheel combat in an era when young drivers—think 2012-spec Romain Grosjean, Pastor Maldonado and Sergio Perez—have been widely condemned for being unable to pass their rivals without making contact.

Unlike his fellow young upstarts, Sainz has a good knowledge of when to attack and when to accept defeat, as evidenced by his defence against Marcus Ericsson in Australia and, of course, his relinquishing of seventh place to Verstappen in Malaysia, which highlighted his awareness skills.

Overtaking—an art that is, regrettably, less crucial than ever in F1—is the single area where, for now, it is almost impossible to judge Sainz. Yet what we have seen thus far suggests he is a competent, fair passer, if not a move-of-the-century contender.

"I fought hard for Sainz. He did not have a lot of friends or supporters," Red Bull adviser Dr. Helmut Marko told Kleine Zeitung (h/t Motorsport.com) following the Spanish Grand Prix, the event where that famous name of rallying solidified its place in F1.

In judging Sainz's start to life in the pinnacle of motorsports, it is important to consider just how close he came to missing out on an F1 seat in 2015.

Initially overlooked for a Toro Rosso drive as the team partnered Verstappen with Daniil Kvyat, only Sebastian Vettel's shock move to Ferrari and its aftereffects presented Sainz another chance to graduate. And even then, he had to see off Jean-Eric Vergne to earn the seat.

Had those events played out differently—had Vettel opted to remain at Red Bull, had Toro Rosso decided to persevere with Vergne—Sainz would have become the next Antonio Felix da Costa, tumbling from the F1 radar with his career in tatters at the tender age of 20. 

He would have been regarded as nothing more than a substandard driver with a famous surname.

But not only was he granted a reprieve and another chance, but he has grabbed it with both hands to the point where—if Kvyat or Daniel Ricciardo were to leave Red Bull Racing—it would arguably be he, not Verstappen, offered the opportunity to join the four-time world champions.

Underestimated, undervalued and less fashionable than Verstappen he may be, but the Spaniard has proven in his short time in F1 that he, like his team-mate, is the real deal.

For Marko, Carlos was worth fighting for.

All results and statistics, unless stated, have been taken from the official Formula One website, Toro Rosso's official website and emailed Pirelli infographics.

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