What Sainz’s early F1 leadership manifesto idea means for his GPDA director stint

Carlos Sainz’s pre-season testing press conference appearance alongside most of the rookie drivers entering Formula 1 in 2025 revealed much about his current position in the championship.

The first is that, at 30 and about to start his 11th grand prix racing season, he is now one of F1’s veteran figures – the youngster of his 2015 Toro Rosso debut alongside Max Verstappen long gone.

The second is how Sainz has chosen to use this status to try and benefit his peers.

Because – sitting alongside Oliver Bearman, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Gabriel Bortoleto and Isack Hadjar in the press conference room on the final day of Bahrain testing – Sainz wasn’t even a week on from being announced as replacing Sebastian Vettel as a director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association.

He’s joined chairman Alexander Wurz, George Russell and Anastasia Fowle (the GPDA’s legal counsel) as the body’s representatives.

Sainz’s decision to work on behalf of the F1 racing pack came over a winter where he’d reflected on his age and career achievements. He also felt that as he was stepping back down the grid in swapping Ferrari for Williams, he might be well placed for the GPDA in acting away from the bitter infighting frontrunners must engage in (see Russell’s ongoing spat with Verstappen).

Having called Wurz, they met in Monaco in January and it was quickly agreed Sainz was to become the GPDA’s second active racing director since Vettel retired at the end of 2022.

“Now that I’m 30 and have 10 years of experience in F1, I start to understand how this sport works,” Sainz explained in Bahrain about his ambition to join the GPDA. “And the combination of the drivers, FOM, and that link with the FIA, how with my experience I could potentially bring myself forward as a candidate.”

Sainz also revealed that the GPDA has “three or four things that we need to work on and that is going to take part of our time” in 2025. The current driver expression clampdown being enacted by the FIA likely tops that bill, but the adjusted racing rules coming for this year and ongoing frustration with the application of penalties and collection of driver fines are also in the spotlight for the GPDA.

“Some of them are private issues that we are trying to address in a private manner,” Sainz added. “Others are more public.

“You’ve seen the letter that we posted [on the GPDA’s Instagram account last November] and the support that we got from rally drivers not long ago [after Rally Sweden in February, with a similar public address to the FIA]. It seems like we all seem to be in a similar mind frame in that sense.”

Sainz’s appearance alongside the majority of 2025’s rookie crop meant he was asked to assess their tricky position – with Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) running restricted to just 1000km this year.

By way of historical context, back in 2007, Lewis Hamilton was able to log nearly 5000 miles in pre-season running with current and former F1 machinery ahead of his debut. TPC running had previously been more generous for upcoming racers.

And, after wishing the rookies “all the best”, the Spaniard again showcased his calm and intellect as he presented an idea that reveals just how the GPDA will gain from what many paddock insiders consider to be wisdom beyond his years.

Carlos Sainz, Williams FW47

Photo by: Williams F1

“F1, if I’m honest, could do a bit of an effort in trying to do a better job in how we go testing,” he said. “In the end, you have a lot of teams spending an infinite amounts of money in simulators.

“You have drivers flying to the UK from Monaco to go to the simulator and I don’t understand why we get three days of testing when all that money could be invested into, I don’t know, eight days of testing – I’m not asking for too much – eight-to-10 days where every team picks their places to test.

“It’s nice to have a collective test, I think it should stay, but my proposal would be to put in the budget cap the number of days, put in the budget cap the simulator also and see where the teams want to spend their money – if it’s in the sim or it’s in 10 testing days.

“Rookies would benefit and I think F1 teams would benefit because even though the simulators are good, they are not as good as some of the engineers or people tend to believe they are. I would always choose testing, and for these guys also, than going to a simulator.”

The cost of flying drivers on regular short-haul journeys would need to be balanced against how much it would take for flying as many as 75 staff members required to run a car in testing, in Bahrain or elsewhere, in pre-season.

But this example alone demonstrates Sainz’s worth to his peers and how thoughtfully he will go about representing them.