Carlos Sainz Jr expands on his father dropping out of the FIA President election, as he and fellow F1 drivers hope that he runs for it the next time.
Ahead of the F1 Austrian GP, Sainz Sr announced his decision to pull out of the FIA Presidential election bid to go up against current head Mohammed Ben Sulayem. Since the announcement of the Spaniard eyeing the top job, Sulayem had his supporters release letters in support of him.
In the meantime, Sainz Sr undertook his research and concluded that it is not the right time to go into election mode. In his statement, the Spaniard noted about his deal with Ford to compete in Dakar Rally. As a FIA President, he would have to give up on his racing commitments, naturally.
It is unclear if that was the only reason. Certainly, he did not have enough time to gather support or finances to run for the big post. Sainz Jr was disappointed by the news, even though he understood the reasons behind it. Even though there may be a chance in future, he felt the time was right to do it now.
“As his son, no, as a motorsport fan, yes,” said Sainz Jr to media when asked if he is disappointed. “I think many motorsport people would have liked to see my dad giving it a go and seeing what he could have done for the sport, but as his son, and after evaluating a bit also with him, all the things he had to get involved with and have to take care of, to confirm and to have any possibility of running for that presidency, I think I understand why he’s not doing it and why he’s letting it go and focusing on his own stuff.
“Never say never [for in the future]. I think the ideal time was now, given the state of the situation that everything is in, I think it was the ideal moment for him to go in and try to have a positive effect. I don’t know if that will be ideal in four or eight years’ time. But, yeah, I’ll never say never, but right now, for sure, he’s not interested anymore,” summed up Sainz, who reckons that there is much to do still, even though they have made some advances with Sulayem in recent times.
The whole swearing matter did not sit well with the F1 drivers. They had to speak up to make things better. “I think there’s no secret, drivers… we’ve felt over the last few years that there’s been a bit of a lack of transparency and a lack of understanding with the main governance of the FIA,” continued Sainz.
“Even though the intentions might have been good sometimes and the way the FIA were trying to do things might have always been within the best spirit, I felt like drivers… we’ve always been a bit left out and sometimes our opinions were not listened to enough. There’s sometimes been corrections and we felt like there’s been a good reaction to those corrections, but clearly other times we haven’t felt that way and we’ve made it very clear with our statements.
“I can only see a way forward and getting better because this year has certainly been frustrating for the most part. So, let’s see if it improves and maybe today’s press release from the FIA is already a sign of the intentions of making everything a bit more clear,” summed up Sainz.
Here’s some of the F1 drivers on the news –
Fernando Alonso: “Yeah, sure, it is nice when there are few candidates, the people….at the end of the day, motorsport…they select people and go for the one they believe. Carlos is a great sportsman and a great person, maybe in the future…I think [he should] just postpone it and not completely cancel it, so lets see in the future.”
George Russell: “I mean, some people may argue why would they want to take on that role, there’s awful lot of work. You do it, probably because of the love of the sport, but yeah, I don’t know it has been an easy role to fill ever. Not really to comment much more than that. Carlos Sr was always a very well respected individual upon motorsport in general, so it seemed like that would be a very good choice and it would be a great individual to sort of lean that side of motorsport, obviously going far beyond Formula 1, but Formula 1 is the pinnacle part of it. Yeah, I don’t really have nothing more to say.”
Charles Leclerc: “I don’t know, obviously I know Carlos Jr and Carlos Sr really well, all I can say is that Carlos Sr is a very – not that Carlos Jr is not – intelligent guy and I thought that it was quite good that he would be presenting himself for that but unfortunately there were reasons on his side that made…it was not the right moment to do so. I don’t know the motivation behind to drop out but that’s all I can say. I think it is a…personally, he has a lot of common sense, good to see him particulate in that.”
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