Carlos Sainz lifts lid on personal fight during 2024 F1 season: “Life is hitting me hard”

Describing 2024 as a “character-building year,” Carlos Sainz discussed the emotions that ran through him following his appendicitis surgery towards the beginning of last year’s Formula 1 season. 

While the year ended with the Spaniard leaving Ferrari for the Williams F1 team, he grew as an athlete after such a challenging year. Talking about his experience on the High Performance podcast, he discussed the challenges he faced.

Finishing fifth in the 2024 drivers’ championship with 290 points and two race wins, this would be his final year with the Scuderia. But the Australian Grand Prix was especially spectacular, with him taking his first victory of the season despite still recovering from surgery.

“I went to Jeddah and then my appendix decided it was the right time in my career to show up. I had to miss that race.

“It’s like life is hitting me hard for some reason in 2024. For some reason they’ve decided this is my character-building year and I took it a bit like that.”

It was the weekend of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix when Sainz was diagnosed with appendicitis and was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery. While feeling unwell on Thursday, he still managed to complete both practice sessions. 

“Like someone up there has decided this is the year to give me a bit of a hard time. I need to fight back, you know. And I remember having the appendix surgery and having to watch the race in the box with the team. I decided to walk into the paddock that day still limping.”

Carlos Sainz, Scuderia Ferrari

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

While this would floor many of us mere mortals, the driver was back trackside to cheer on his team, team-mate, Charles Leclerc, and reserve driver Oliver Bearman. 

“I went to actually help Ollie. I went to a race to sit down with my engineers and help Ollie to try and help the team. And I said, ‘You guys decided I cannot continue with this thing, but I’m going to show you my worth apart from just driving fast cars and driving as fast as I can.’ And I said, ‘What can I do?’

“And I actually went to the paddock that day and said: I’m going to use this as an opportunity to see how my engineers communicate with Ollie, what kind of screens they’re seeing, how are they saying things, and I’m actually going to be a third engineer for them to maybe learn what if I was only in the car, what kind of information I would need to get in this exact moment.”

Two weeks later, Sainz won the Australian Grand Prix.

“It’s tough, but it’s character-building, as I said. And I came back after that appendix surgery and won that race. And I think I won it because of that attitude – staying positive.

“Because it would have been so easy to become negative and to curse the year, to curse the moment, and to curse life about how bad it’s treating you and remain negative. And I think that positivity is what helped me win the race on the comeback.”