Carlos Sainz’s victory after Max Verstappen’s wonderful retirement at last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix may have been a bit embarrassing.
Of course, the Spaniard will leave Ferrari after the season, as the Prancing Horse signed Lewis Hamilton ahead of the official start of the 2024 season for 2025 and beyond.
Sainz thus becomes the first driver since 2021 to win a race despite it being publicly known that he would retire at the end of the season. It is not appropriate for this to happen in fashionable Formula 1, but it must happen. It will take place so early in the final season.
Once informed that a driver will leave an F1 team, attitudes towards him change. The team will naturally start to focus more on moving the car around the other driver, while cutting off information and knowledge to the outgoing driver. .
This is usually a short process, as summer break is when most of the season’s stupid big moves are resolved. That’s what makes it desirable to see Sainz and Hamilton this season, as both have been ahead of their team-mates for about a year. When will it fall?
It’s to be answered, but for now, let’s take a look at five other occasions when a driver has won by leaving a team in the last 20 years.
Let’s start with the scenario that’s perhaps most appealing: one in which we’ll probably never know the full story due to Michael Schumacher’s first twist of fate in skiing in 2013 that took him out of public life.
In 2006, Schumacher had shown a lot of speed, but Ferrari had one on their hands. He had signed Kimi Raikkonen for a seat in 2007 and also had Felipe Massa.
After Schumacher’s victory at the Italian Grand Prix, with the German on the podium, Ferrari sent out a press release announcing that Schumacher would retire at the end of the season. If you look at ITV’s screen on F1TV, pit lane reporter Ted Cravitz reads PR on air just before the national anthems begin.
Schumacher proved it after the podium in the press conference, but curiously the team allowed Schumacher to make the announcement on his own terms.
Schumacher’s eventual F1 victory came at the next race, in Shanghai, which put him in trouble with Fernando Alonso competing in the final two races of the season. Schumacher then travelled to Japan and suffered an engine failure while leading the race, which, combined with Alonso’s victory, left the German out of the championship. Schumacher could finish fourth after a last-ditch heroic effort in Brazil, while Alonso finished second and won the championship.
Was it really Schumacher’s decision to retire from F1 the first time around?After all, he had a contract until 2009 with Ferrari and was still a control and reserve driver. Unusually, he has been concerned about the progression of the car, which overall reserve drivers have no say in. Any chance of getting a conclusive answer probably ended up on the ski slopes.
Keep fighting, Michael.
Not only did Alonso win many races in 2006 when he left Renault, but he even won the championship. Like Hamilton and Sainz, it was known very early in the season that Alonso was about to pass out, but that didn’t seem to slow him down. .
It’s not unusual for Alonso to take a leave of absence from McLaren after winning the 2007 Italian Grand Prix, but the writing was definitely on the wall at the time. 2007 broke Alonso, as shown in a mini-series of articles I wrote a few years ago.
Alonso managed to remain competitive and had a chance to win the championship until the last race. He finished third at Brazil 2007 and third overall. After squandering the championship by one point that year, Alonso has never been closer.
“Hamilton-to-Mercedes” remains one of the most unexpected announcements in the history of silly seasons, on par with “Sebastian-Vettel-to-Ferrari” and “Hamilton-to-Ferrari. “
The former champion at the time realised that McLaren had evolved and paid through the team since his karting days. Mercedes, a midfield team that had won just one race since Brawn GP was renamed GP in 2009.
It was a time when factory groups in general seemed to be taking a step back, with the exception of Ferrari. McLaren had overtaken engine supplier Mercedes, but Red Bull also dominated the series while Renault struggled before divesting. Customer groups were all the rage at the time.
Following the announcement, Hamilton won the United States Grand Prix, the first round of the new Circuit of the Americas. That year, McLaren had a booming car in the second half, prompting Hamilton to retire early four times in the final nine races. It wasn’t until Austin that Hamilton scored a memorable victory.
Like Sainz, Sergio Perez was replaced by an F1 champion, in this case, Vettel.
Perez had yet to race in the penultimate round of the season. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 F1 season has been a hodgepodge of races, the first of which is the Sakhir Grand Prix.
Held on the ‘outer loop’ of the Bahrain International Circuit, the track was 2. 2 miles long and consisted of 3 long straights and a few corners in the ‘rear section’. Valtteri Bottas took pole with a lap time of 53. 377 seconds, just the moment It is the first time in F1 history that pole has set a time of less than a minute.
Perez spun on the first lap, but thanks to wear and tear and Hamilton’s absence from the race due to COVID-19, Perez was able to pull off his first career win in a dramatic comeback.
The victory secured Perez’s position at Red Bull Racing, a position he has held ever since. However, he was a free agent after that season. And it would be a miracle if Red Bull said goodbye to him and rejoined that list. . .
Michael has been watching NASCAR for 20 years and covered the game from 2013 to 2021. He went on to cover Formula 1, IndyCar and SRX for the venue, while also putting his feet in the water from time to time in the NASCAR pool.