Sainz wants new multi-year deal prior to 2024 season

Carlos Sainz has made clear that he wants his new contract with Ferrari to be for multiple years - and he’d like it to be signed and sealed before the start of the 2024 season.

Recently, Italian sources suggested new team boss Frederic Vasseur is offering Charles Leclerc a doubled salary and a huge five-year deal to extend his stay at Maranello beyond next year.

Spaniard Sainz, though, is rumoured to have been offered as little as a new one-year deal.

"There is talk about what they’re offering me but it’s being said without knowing and I’m not going to speculate," he said at an event for his sponsor Estrella Galicia in Madrid.

Vasseur said this week that talks have begun and the outcome will be known "soon".

"We have to agree," Sainz said, "and we have three months ahead of us to do it - until the first race of the world championship.

"Obviously I want to renew and I would like to do it for more than a year," he added. "I feel perfectly valued by Fred and the entire Ferrari family and as a driver, that is your main priority.

"I will renew if I feel that way and if I feel valued, which I am. I am convinced that if we both want it, we will reach an agreement," the 29-year-old said.

Like Leclerc, Sainz’s current contract is set in stone for 2024 but Sainz insists that he wants to know his destiny before the new season kicks off early next year.

"The reality is that there have been conversations as Fred said the other day," he said. "I want to start knowing where I am going to be in 2025.

"I wouldn’t like to start without knowing what my next destination is. My number one priority is Ferrari and to be there for many more years. It’s not secret - it’s a team I’m very happy with.

"We have to agree in these coming months."

Sainz insists that he thinks Ferrari has the potential to catch up with Red Bull after a "tough year" for all of Max Verstappen’s Formula 1 rivals.

At the same time, he admits to also being worried.

"I believe Max has not needed to go 100 percent in all the races and that is what scares me most of all," said Sainz. "That’s why I tell Ferrari that we do not need to improve four (tenths), but six.

"We have to see why in the race we are missing that little step. On Saturday we see that we are not that far away, but later in the race they have 3 tenths or half a second per lap that becomes 30 seconds at the finish line.

"I think we made the mistake of going in the wrong direction that the mid-2022 car showed us. We thought we were not that far away. It also happened to Mercedes."