Carlos Sainz sips tea while Ferrari boils: “None of my business”
John Elkann lobbed a grenade into Maranello’s corridors this week, and Carlos Sainz elected to duck rather than dive on it.
Ferrari’s president, clearly unimpressed with how the Scuderia’s season has unfolded, told Italian media that while the mechanics and engineers were pulling their weight, “the rest is not up to par.” He added that Ferrari’s drivers should “focus on driving, talk less,” and “think more about Ferrari and less about themselves,” insisting second in the championship was still possible if the team pulled together.
That’s combustible stuff anywhere, but in Ferrari’s world it’s practically a siren.
Inevitably, someone asked Sainz—now a Williams driver after Ferrari chose to pair Charles Leclerc with seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton for 2025—what he made of Elkann’s broadside and whether life in red forces drivers to censor themselves more than at a team like Williams. He smiled, took the high road, and reached for the internet’s favorite amphibian.
“How do you say that, Ted? That is none of my business,” Sainz grinned in the TV pen, before clarifying for the non-terminally-online: “You know the frog with the tea? That’s literally me right now.”
Translation: I’m out of Ferrari, I’m out of this. Kermit.gif.
It was a deft response from a driver who knows the Ferrari attention economy as well as anyone. Sainz spent four seasons in red, won grands prix, and shouldered big moments when the car wasn’t quite there—he understands the scrutiny and the subtext. And he knows that when the president starts talking about drivers needing to “talk less,” every word from the cockpit to the comms team suddenly gets weighed like a front wing.
Elkann’s comments were as pointed as they were public. “In Formula 1, we have mechanics who are always first in performing pit stops. The engineers work to improve the car. The rest is not up to par,” he said, before delivering the line that will echo around the motorhome: “We need drivers who think more about Ferrari and less about themselves.”
Ferrari arrived this year with momentum from 2024 and a blockbuster Hamilton-Leclerc pairing that was supposed to turn potential into pressure for the rest of the grid. Results haven’t matched the mood music often enough, and patience at the very top rarely lasts long in Maranello. Elkann’s message, packaged as a call to unity, also read like a very direct reminder: the badge matters more than the brand.
For Hamilton and Leclerc, that’s a challenge and a warning. They’re two of the sharpest media operators in the field and don’t usually trade in unnecessary noise. But this is Ferrari; every radio message becomes a thinkpiece, every offhand remark a headline. Sainz chose to let the tea steep and move on.
There’s also a little irony in the delivery mechanism. The Kermit meme—born from an old Lipton ad, adopted by social media to flag drama while pretending not to—was the perfect wink from a driver who’s stepped out of the red-hot spotlight and into a team bent on its own rebuild. At Williams, Sainz has different problems to solve and fewer political crosswinds. Keeping his head down is as much a competitive advantage as anything else.
Still, the former Ferrari man’s non-answer said plenty. When a president goes public, it’s not by accident. It puts the onus on the garage, on the pit wall, and, yes, on the two drivers in red. And it ensures that for the rest of this campaign, every result—good, bad, or merely fine—will be framed against Elkann’s bar.
Sainz? He’s got other fish to fry. And a frog with tea to keep him company.
