Carlos Sainz Vazquez de Castro was born on September 1, 1994, in Madrid, Spain. He is the son of Carlos Sainz Sr., a two-time World Rally Championship winner (1990, 1992) who went on to win the Dakar Rally four times, most recently in 2024 at age 61 — making him the oldest Dakar winner in history. Motorsport ran through the family, and Sainz Jr. began karting at around age seven, winning the Cadet Category of the Madrid Championship in 2006 and the Junior Monaco Kart Cup in 2009. Growing up around his father’s rally career gave him early exposure to top-level motorsport, though he has said in interviews that carrying the family name added pressure to prove himself on his own terms.

Sainz joined the Red Bull Junior Team in 2010 after winning a Formula BMW scholarship, then climbed the single-seater ladder quickly: champion in Formula Renault NEC (2011), race winner in British Formula 3 (2012), a GP3 season with Arden (2013), and finally the Formula Renault 3.5 Series title in 2014 with DAMS, taking seven wins that season. That title run earned him a Formula 1 seat with Scuderia Toro Rosso for 2015, where he lined up alongside fellow rookie Max Verstappen and quickly built a reputation as a consistent, hard-working midfield performer.

Sainz spent three seasons at Toro Rosso (2015-2017) before moving to the Renault F1 Team partway through 2017. After a season and a half at Renault, he joined McLaren for 2019, where he delivered a run of strong points finishes and his first F1 podium, at Brazil in 2019. In 2021, he stepped up to Scuderia Ferrari, replacing four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel alongside Charles Leclerc. Over four seasons in red, Sainz recorded four Grand Prix wins — the 2022 British Grand Prix, the 2023 Singapore Grand Prix, and a double at the 2024 Australian and Mexico City Grands Prix — along with numerous podiums. He was released from Ferrari for 2025 when the team signed Lewis Hamilton, and moved to the Atlassian Williams F1 Team on a multi-year deal. His first season at Williams (2025) brought two Grand Prix podiums and a Sprint podium, including the team’s first full-race podium since 2017 at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku. As of August 2026, Sainz remains Williams’ lead driver, with his existing contract running through the end of the 2026 season and reported extension talks ongoing for 2027 and beyond.

Sainz’s current income is built primarily around his Williams driver contract. Multiple outlets tracking 2026 F1 pay, including f1salaries.com and PlanetF1, put his base salary at roughly $13 million for the 2026 season, with performance-related bonuses potentially pushing total on-track earnings higher. Forbes’ 2025 highest-paid F1 drivers list placed Sainz ninth on the grid, well behind top earners Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton but ahead of most of the midfield. Layered on top of his driving income are personal endorsement deals (covered below), which several secondary trackers estimate add several million dollars a year, though exact combined-income figures are not independently published by Sainz or Williams.

Public reporting on Sainz’s specific contract values is inconsistent for his earlier seasons — salary figures for his Toro Rosso and Renault years were never reliably confirmed — but his pay is better documented from McLaren onward. Multiple outlets, including Spotrac’s F1 salary tracker, reported his McLaren-era salary in the single-digit millions, rising through his four seasons at Ferrari to a reported figure north of $10 million by his final year there. His current Williams contract, signed for 2025-2026, has been widely reported at around $10-13 million per year in base salary, with bonus potential on top. In August 2026, multiple outlets including GPFans and Yahoo Sports reported Williams was preparing a significantly larger extension offer — described as “Ferrari-level” money, in the region of €26-30 million per year — to keep Sainz beyond 2026. As of this writing that extension had been reported but not confirmed as signed, so it is not counted as part of his current earnings.

Alongside his driving income, Sainz holds a number of personal sponsorship deals. He became a global brand ambassador for L’Oreal Paris in March 2025. He has also been a long-running ambassador for Spanish brewer Estrella Galicia, a partnership that PlanetF1 reports dates back to 2013, before his F1 debut, and was extended into the 2025 season. Banking group Santander signed Sainz as a global brand ambassador in 2024, featuring him in advertising campaigns. He and his father have also both been named ambassadors for British clothing brand Hackett London, and Sainz has appeared in Spanish-market advertising for Sony’s PlayStation brand, tied to the EA Sports F1 video game series. None of these deals have publicly disclosed values, so their financial contribution to his overall income can only be estimated.

Sainz’s most well-documented business venture is Carlos Sainz Karting, a set of go-kart racing centres in the Madrid area that carry his name and endorsement. Independent tourism and leisure listings, including Madrid’s official tourism site esmadrid.com, confirm locations at La Ermita in central Madrid and in Las Rozas, offering indoor and outdoor karting, corporate events, and driving courses. Beyond this venture, some lower-quality aggregator sites reference other business interests attributed to Sainz — including additional hospitality ventures and investment funds — but these claims could not be verified against credible, primary reporting, so they are omitted here rather than repeated as fact.

Sainz is understood to be based in Madrid, where he grew up, and has spoken publicly about spending time at homes in Spain during the off-season. However, no reliable, independently verifiable public record — such as a property registry filing, verified real estate report, or on-the-record interview confirming purchase price — could be located for a specific property owned by Sainz. Reports describing exact homes or values circulating on social media and low-authority blogs do not meet a credible sourcing bar, so this article does not repeat specific figures. As with many active F1 drivers, his major assets are likely concentrated in liquid investments and ongoing driver income rather than disclosed real estate.