Lando Norris sent a message to Carlos Sainz when he was just 13 years old and got ignored by his future teammate.
Norris and Sainz are great friends today. The two got close when Sainz joined McLaren in 2019 and partnered with Norris in the latter’s rookie campaign. In his two years at Surrey, Sainz developed a great relationship with the young Brit, something which lasts even today.
The duo has been given the name ‘Carlando’ by fans, but what many of them didn’t know is that they go way back! Fans on Twitter unearthed a very old Tweet that Sainz posted. This was back in 2012 when Sainz was driving in Formula 3 and was 17 years old.
Norris at the time was a kart driver, but it seems as though he knew his future teammate even back then. The Spaniard Tweeted that he would start his race from P12 despite qualifying from P3 and P4 respectively. A confused Norris asked the Madrid-born driver, “Why were you penalized?” by replying to that Tweet.
I was ment to start p3 and p4 for both races but suddenly they told me i am penalised and i will start race 1 p12.
— Carlos Sainz (@Carlossainz55) June 9, 2012
Fans also pointed out that Sainz ignored a young Norris by not replying to Tweet, even to this date!
Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz share good relationship despite being in different teams
After spending two seasons with Norris as his teammate, Sainz completed his move to Ferrari. A lot of people thought that they would now grow distant from one another but the bond remains the same.
Norris revealed that they still talk to one other very often over text. He admits that they aren’t as close as they were, but that’s normal. As teammates, they saw each other every single day. But being in different teams based out of different countries, one cannot expect the same.
Ferrari and McLaren are also very bitter rivals since they’re the most successful teams in F1 history. Their friendship, however, is not affected by this rivalry whatsoever.
“As much as the rivalry’s probably increased, and he wants to beat me and I want to beat him,” Norris said to racing news 365. “And the teams want to beat each other, we still just have a lot of respect for each other and who we are as drivers and so on.”
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