Ferrari Media Centre
Even though he is leaving the Ferrari F1 team for Williams, Carlos Sainz has just taken delivery of his brand new Ferrari Daytona SP3 road car worth over $2 million.
Sainz has had four good seasons driving for Ferrari. He’s taken 4 victories, including his first ever Formula 1 win at Silverstone in 2022, 24 podium finishes, 6 pole positions and 3 fastest laps. He’s in the best form of his career, but unfortunately his contract with the Scuderia was ended to make way for Lewis Hamilton who will be joining Ferrari in 2025.
Carlos Sainz will instead be heading to Williams. The team are currently struggling towards the back of the grid, but with ex-Mercedes manager James Vowles at the helm, Sainz is feeling positive about helping his new team develop in to a front-running contender.
One thing Ferrari could offer Sainz that Williams definitely can’t is a spicy selection of road cars for their driver to cruise around in between races.
Ferrari have a plethora of hypercars available for their wealthy customers to purchase. But Sainz has never been one for showing off in particularly flashy cars.
In fact, during the press conference for the 2016 Hungarian Grand Prix, a journalist asked each of the drivers what cars they had on the road.
Perez said he has a Ferrari. Marcus Ericsson said he has a Porsche Panamera. Felipe Massa revealed he had a LaFerrari and a Ferrari F40 (what a collection). Nico Rosberg said he had a classic Mercedes 280SL. And Carlos Sainz proudly announced that he has a Golf.
And Sainz certainly is proud of his Golf. It’s a Mk6 GTI that’s been a faithful servant to the Spanish Formula 1 driver since his parents bought it for him when he was 18. In one episode of the Netflix documentary Drive to Survive, Sainz was seen driving his beloved VW, taking his father to a game of padel in the car, complete with kerb-rash on the alloys.
At the start of 2023, however, Sainz unveiled a new car. He’d finally given in to the allure of his employer’s selection of powerful road cars. He pulled the wraps off his new, bespoke, Ferrari 812 Competizione.
The 6.5 litre V12 engine in the 812 produces 819bhp, accelerates to 60 mph in under 3 seconds and would hit a top speed of over 211mph. For someone who drives a Formula 1 car on the weekends, it’s undoubtedly one of the fastest things Sainz could have picked to drive on the road.
The car was tailored to his own specification. It featured his personal colour choice, a dark gun-metal grey with red striping, black wheels and red brake calipers. Inside the car he’d had his race number 55 embroidered on the carpets and his motto ‘Smooth Operator’ on the door sills.
That was 2023. Now, at the end of 2024 just as Sainz bids farewell to his team, he’s taken delivery of one more even special Ferrari road car.
Ferrari Scuderia Monte Carlo, the official Ferrari dealer in Monaco, posted on their Instagram the unveiling of Sainz’s new road car, a Ferrari Daytona SP3.
The SP3 again has a 6.5 litre naturally aspirated V12 engine, this time producing 830bhp. Only 599 examples of the Daytona exist and their retail price starts at a cool $2.25 million.
But once again, Sainz has had his car delivered with a design bespoke to him, using Ferrari’s personalised Tailor Made service.
It features a very similar colour scheme to his 812 – dark grey with black wheels and red striped. Again it has his race number 55 on it, this time painted on the side skirts. Smooth Operator can be seen in the interior and also in the engine bay, on the intake plenums.
A car spotter in Monaco was present at the dealership when Sainz arrived in a Purosangue to pull the covers off his new Daytona SP3. Check out the video below.
So did Carlos have to buy the car, or was it his parting gift from Ferrari? Well Carlos and Charles Leclerc have both said in the past that they don’t get discounts on Ferrari road cars, despite being F1 drivers for the team.
In fact, it’s said that Ferrari employees aren’t allowed to buy new Ferraris because the company will always prioritize its customer over its workers. But its F1 drivers are the exception to that rule.
So whilst it would be nice to think that Sainz might have been gifted his new SP3 as a free “thank you and goodbye” present from his employers, in reality getting the chance to purchase one, new, without waiting years for an allocation, is privilege in itself.
Felipe Massa, the ex-Ferrari F1 driver, said on a recent podcast that he once got 50% off the price of a new Ferrari after taking his first win for the team at the Turkish Grand Prix. So I’d like to think that Ferrari offered Sainz at least a few Euros off the Ferrari as way of a parting gift.
Maybe stop reading reddit? This wasn;t a gift, he paid for it. If you knew anything at all about Ferrari you’d know they dont gift cars to drivers.
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