Red Bull wanted to silence rumours - Sainz

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Carlos Sainz believes his early contract extension at Toro Rosso was a result of Red Bull wanting to silence rumours about his future amid interest from other teams.

After Max Verstappen was promoted to Red Bull ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix, Sainz has been in fine form and has picked up 26 points in the eight races since then. His improvement saw Sainz linked to both Ferrari and Renault, and the Spaniard told F1i he feels Red Bull wanted to put an end to the reports.

"There were obviously many rumours going on at that time," Sainz said. "As I started to show my true performance some rumours came alive which were silenced very quickly by Red Bull by signing a contract.

"I felt very privileged when Red Bull executed the option on me so early in the season, I think I was probably one of the first drivers to be signed so early by such a tough team as Toro Rosso so this shows things were done really well during this period of time."

And Sainz insists proving Red Bull wrong for opting to promote Verstappen is not the driving force for him at this stage of his career.

"No I don’t think it’s my motivation. My main motivation has to be within the Toro Rosso team to extract the maximum potential of the car. Make sure every weekend I am the driver that is extracting the maximum out of the package I have.

"Recently I think that has been the case and that is why I am so happy but my intention is never to prove to Red Bull: ‘You got it wrong with Max, it’s me coming’. My intention is to be able one day whenever they have a chance again of promoting someone to make sure it’s me. That is my main target at the moment."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.