Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur is “optimistic” of seeing Carlos Sainz return to the grid next week in Australia, but the Scuderia will let the Spaniard make the final call.
Sainz was hit with appendicitis in Saudi Arabia and was forced to pull out of the race weekend on Friday morning and undergo emergency surgery.
However, twenty-four hours later he was discharged from hospital and spent Saturday at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit with his Ferrari team.
Sainz is the second driver in recent years to suffer a case of appendicitis on a race weekend, with Alex Albon relinquishing his Williams seat at the Italian GP at Monza after the opening day of running.
He was replaced by Mercedes reserve driver Nyck de Vries who went on to finish a remarkable ninth on his F1 debut.
Albon was able to return to the fray three weeks later in Singapore without missing a race. But in Sainz's case, he only has less than two weeks to fully recover from his ordeal.
“The recovery so far is amazing, the fact he was able to come today to be with the team is a very good sign, and a very good support for us,” commented Vasseur last weekend.
“Now, he will fly back with me tomorrow [Sunday] and he will have one week of complete rest, and we will take a decision on when he has to fly to Melbourne in one week's time. But I'm quite optimistic.”
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Sainz is scheduled to leave Europe next weekend to be in Melbourne on Monday. It’s likely that he’ll travel down under regardless of his condition and then decide on site if he's fit to race.
If not, Ferrari rookie Ollie Bearman who enjoyed a remarkable F1 baptism of fire in Jeddah, where he finished last Saturday’s race P7, will once again sub for Sainz.
As much as Vasseur was impressed with the 18-year-old Briton’s efforts, the Frenchman was astonished in hindsight with Sainz’s performance last Thursday given the premises of his appendicitis ailment.
“I think it's a characteristic of the family! I'm not strong enough to extract Carlos from the car,” Vasseur joked.
“When he came on Thursday morning, he didn't feel well, 'Let me try to do some laps,' and he did the full session. The afternoon, it was exactly the same.
©Ferrari
“Already, at this stage, it was amazing for me, because I found out after the session he was completely destroyed.
“If you look at the result of FP1 and FP2, he had a very decent pace, and he was even able to do long stints, and this was mega.
“But now let's be focused on the future for Carlos. The most important thing is not to push today, it's to recover and to recover properly.
"I don't want to rush, but he's an adult, and he'll take the right decision. It's a huge recovery, and now we have to be focussed on Melbourne.
"He needs to have a good rest this week, and we'll see next week.”
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