Breakfast with ... Carlos Sainz

They say you shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, but Eric Silbermann risks the wrath of Mrs Manners by having breakfast with a pot-pourri of paddock people.

Pushy dads are a common feature wherever kids take part in sport, be it on the football pitch or the go-kart track. They can be a nightmare to deal with if you are running a team and, as F1 drivers get younger, we are seeing more fathers in attendance at the Grands Prix. However, when the dad in question is a multiple world champion and still holds the record for the highest number of participations in the World Rally Championship, you’re not going to tell him to keep away from the race track. Actually, this particular dad seems to keep himself to himself. It’s ironic that Carlos Sainz Jnr now drives for Toro Rosso, while his father was known as “El Matador.”

On competing in the Dakar

It’s 25 years since you won your first world championship title and yet you’re still competing because you’re doing the Dakar Rally in a few weeks. Who are you doing it with?

I’m driving at the moment for the factory Peugeot team. It’s a good challenge. It started last year. The challenge is to try to win the Dakar with a two-wheel drive car, which is not easy but I really like big challenges and this is a good one.

Can we say you’re not a young man anymore and obviously this year you’ve been following your son everywhere so has it been difficult to find the time to keep fit and get in shape for the Dakar?

Of course. I haven’t been at all the races due to my commitments with Peugeot but I try to come as much as possible and at the same time, this morning, I was already in the gym for an hour and I try to do the maximum because the challenge of the Dakar is not only for the car, it’s also for the driver. You need to be very fit and you should not underestimate the physical challenge that it is to do this rally because if not, you will suffer a lot.

It’s changed a lot, the Dakar. You won it, when?

I won it in 2010 and I started in 2006-7.

It’s changed quite a lot in terms of the character of the event, different locations?

It’s a little bit more of a sprint now in South America than it was in Africa. Especially this year it looks like we’re doing less desert because we were supposed to start in Peru but then they cancelled that part at the last moment so I think we are doing Argentina, Bolivia and back to Argentina and there is obviously is less desert, less dunes than we expected, which is not good for our type of car.

Have you done much testing then with the actual car this year?

We started in July and then we went to Africa three or four times. I did the Morocco Rally as well. It was looking good, we were leading, but then we had a mechanical failure so we’re still learning, trying to make the car very reliable. I hope we can present a good challenge to the Minis who were last year’s winners, and I hope we can fight with them.