Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko confirmed this Thursday that the Austrian team is “speaking” with Carlos Sainz, who is completing his “strongest season”, about the option of signing him for 2025, although the Madrid native has “a very succulent offer of Audi” that the energetic ones cannot “match”.
“We are talking to him, he is having his strongest season in Formula One,” Marko confirmed in statements to the Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung before the Chinese Grand Prix that starts this Friday.
The arrival of Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari in 2025 left Sainz without a seat with the Italians, who now has a range of options to continue in F1, especially after his good start, with a victory and two third places. Although the Madrid native, according to Marko, “has a very lucrative offer from Audi.” “We cannot equal or surpass,” he pressured the German manufacturer, which will enter the ‘Great Circus’ as a motorcyclist in 2026, racing under the Sauber name in 2025.
“But we know him from the Toro Rosso days, even then he raced with Max. But it really hurt him then when we supported Verstappen at Red Bull and not him,” he reflected on Sainz’s past as a driver for the Red Bull subsidiary in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
However, Marko insisted that the continuity of the Mexican Sergio Pérez remains the preference for Red Bull, because “it is clear that Checo is having his best season at the moment.” “If he maintains these performances he is undoubtedly the best option for 2025 at Red Bull,” he concluded.