Following the fallout after rash comments about his future, Carlos Sainz Jr hopes everything can now settle down so he can focus on that future, which will be with Scuderia Toro Rosso for a fourth consecutive campaign in 2018.
Speaking during the Austrian Grand Prix weekend, Sainz doubted that he would be with Toro Rosso next year, feeling that he may have to look outside the Red Bull programme if a move into Red Bull Racing was not forthcoming, but then faced a backlash from Christian Horner and Helmut Marko, who insisted the Spaniard was to stay.
Now everything has settled down and Sainz has cleared the air with both Horner and Marko, but he admitted it was not a nice feeling to have either of them criticising him for his comments.
“I have my opinion and I said it in that very moment. Maybe I could have used a different wording to put it,” said Sainz to the official Formula 1 website.
“It is not something that I enjoyed, seeing Helmut Marko and Christian Horner going against me, but it sometimes happens in a Formula One career.
“But it should be over, so turn the page.”
Sainz remains focused on becoming a Red Bull driver in the future, but with both Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen under contract for at least 2018, another year at Toro Rosso was going to be the only place he could be if he really wanted that move.
“It is my one and only target to be a Red Bull driver in the future,” admitted Sainz. “That is what I want, and that is what I have said a hundred times before.
“And if one answer said in the heat of the moment is spinning out of control, that is just ‘modern times’.”
