Carlos Sainz has revealed the huge amount of respect he has for Sebastian Vettel by sharing an anecdote from when they worked alongside each other at Red Bull. The Spaniard - who has replaced Vettel at Ferrari for the 2021 F1 season - was a simulator driver for the Red Bull outfit in 2014 when Vettel was in his last season with the Milton Keynes-based squad, and Sainz was touched by a gesture that Vettel made to all of the team's employees when he left. "I have a lot of respect for Sebastian," Sainz told Soy Motor. "I think he is one of the drivers who is going to mark an era in Formula 1, regardless of maybe the most difficult years he has had, but he is a driver who... I will tell a story: the day he left Red Bull in 2014, I was a simulator driver and he wrote a letter to me. "He thought that the work I was doing in the simulator was important to him and to the team, and he was kind enough to say goodbye to Red Bull by sending a letter to all the employees, personalised for each employee. "I was a simulator driver at the time. He knew that at four o'clock in the morning I spent hours in the set-up recommending settings for his race in Australia and he was kind enough to send me a letter thanking me for that effort in the simulator and the hours of work I had put in. "And since then I have a special affection for him and I have a relationship with him beyond the cameras, which maybe I have never told him and one day I will tell him, but since then I have a great respect for him." Now Sainz will follow the path that Vettel took back in 2015 by making his debut as a Ferrari driver, having made the switch from McLaren. The Spaniard feels a mixture of emotions ahead of the first race in Bahrain on 28 March. "It's an important moment, but it's also the moment any driver dreams of," Sainz said. "It is a mixture of responsibility and joy, and of knowing that you are fulfilling a dream. A lot of things come together, a lot of emotions but, above all, desire and enthusiasm, a crazy desire to go to the first race."
Most read
