McLaren boss Brown: No bad blood in Sainz move to Ferrari
Monday, 18 May 2020
The Spaniard's move to the Scuderia was announced last week.
McLaren boss Zak Brown insists there was no bad blood between the team and Carlos Sainz over his switch to Ferrari.
Sainz's move to the Scuderia was announced on Thursday, the Spaniard set to replace Sebastian Vettel after it was confirmed the German will leave Ferrari at the end of 2020.
Daniel Ricciardo will leave Renault to take Sainz's seat with McLaren.
While there has been some animosity over Vettel and Ricciardo's respective exits, there was no tension between McLaren and Sainz, says Brown, as he gave the team advance notice of Ferrari's interest.
"Carlos and I spoke about it, so it wasn't hearing stuff through the grapevine," Brown told Sky F1. "I think how the majority of these driver movements happen is everyone is sneaking around the back of the motorhome, trying to have secret dates.
"I think McLaren has a bit of a different philosophy on our relationships with our people, including our drivers.
"It was a conversation that Carlos had with [team principal] Andreas [Seidl] and I over the winter. We actually had to give him permission to go speak with Ferrari, and we gave him that permission, so it was very above board.
"I think you can see by the way we are eventually going to part that we are very much going to race together this year.
"I think it's great to see that drivers and teams can separate and there not be animosity, because I think that if you look at some of the other movements, it looks like unfortunately there's some bad blood. And yet those people still need to race together this year. I'm quite proud of how we've all handled it."
