The rising F1 star that even has Hamilton impressed

At the end of a recent special Autosport interview with Lewis Hamilton, I asked the triple world champion which of Formula 1's current crop of young, emerging stars was most impressing him.

Inevitably Max Verstappen's name came up. We all know how relentlessly impressive Verstappen has been during his short time in F1 so far, and Hamilton has referred to him as a "force to be reckoned with" on more than one occasion.

Verstappen's Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo was also mentioned, although with the caveat that he is "not really one of the young drivers anymore", given he is 27 years old and has been racing in F1 full-time since the second half of 2011.

There were special nods too for Toro Rosso's Red Bull 'reject' Daniil Kvyat and Mercedes junior Pascal Wehrlein, but the first name that came to Hamilton's mind, after some thoughtful deliberation, was Carlos Sainz Jr.

Beyond the suggestion Hamilton is clearly a fan of the Red Bull method of driver selection - picking them up in the early years of their careers based on ability and continuing to nurture them provided they deliver exceptional performances on track - it's easy to see why Sainz's name came up.

The Toro Rosso driver has been one of F1's consistently better performers over the past 18 months. Verstappen's early-season promotion to Red Bull in 2016 allowed Sainz to grab a more solid foothold within Toro Rosso and he flourished - finishing 11th in last year's championship, more than doubling his points haul from the previous season, and dominating team-mate Kvyat.

Sainz has found tougher internal competition at STR this season, as Kvyat has properly processed his unexpected demotion from Red Bull and come out fighting. The qualifying battle is tight - 4-3 to Sainz (Bahrain is discounted owing to an engine failure in Q1 for Sainz), who is on average 0.118% the faster of the two, though that is skewed by Kvyat's bizarrely off-colour display in Spain.

Sainz is obliterating Kvyat in the drivers' championship, amassing 29 points to Kvyat's four so far, but Kvyat's race record is skewed by several technical failures.

But Sainz is still having the better of this close battle overall. What's more, he has achieved some particularly impressive peaks too - qualifying and finishing sixth in Monaco and obliterating his midfield rivals to finish seventh in mixed conditions in China, where at times he matched the pace of the Ferraris and Red Bulls.

These are the sorts of outstanding performances needed from a driver if they want to impress Red Bull, or Lewis Hamilton for that matter.

"Thanks to Lewis for that comment," says Sainz, when Autosport informs him of Hamilton's assessment. "Especially from a guy like him, who likes talent.

"It's been a good season up until now. We've had our chances to show a bit more in places like China, Barcelona and Monaco. This year in the midfield, there's two or three situations where you really have to go for it and, when you have a small chance of shining, to shine a bit more.

"We've done it correctly up until now. There's also been some other tough races, but it's been a very positive start to the season."

At this point 12 months ago, Red Bull exercised the option in his rolling contract to keep Sainz at Toro Rosso for 2017. Sainz had a serious offer from the works Renault team, but chose to remain with the Red Bull 'family' and try to prove his ultimate worth to them.

For Toro Rosso, it made absolute sense to retain experienced drivers heading into a season of major rule changes. The fact the team currently sits sixth in the constructors' championship, only four points shy of team boss Franz Tost's perpetual target of fifth, vindicates this move.

For Red Bull, it made sense to retain an insurance policy in the driver market, should it somehow lose either of its coveted star drivers to rivals. Currently, both Verstappen and Ricciardo are contracted to Red Bull for next season, but unexpected things can and often do happen in F1, so it pays to be prepared.

But this all leaves Sainz in a difficult position personally. He could enjoy the strongest season of his career to date yet find there is nowhere for him to go at the end of it - unless the unexpected happens at Red Bull, he does what he didn't do last year and flies the nest, or Red Bull takes the unprecedented step of re-signing him to Toro Rosso for a fourth season in 2018, when its own position in the driver market will become more tenuous.

"It's a tricky situation," admits Sainz. "The fact is it looks like Red Bull is closed for another year, with Verstappen and Ricciardo, and probably they are not intending to move.

"A fourth year in Toro Rosso sounds a bit strange. I don't think anyone in the history of Toro Rosso has done it.

"We'll see. My main goal is to be world champion, and it's to be world champion with Red Bull. Hopefully, this opportunity will come.

"I'm a Red Bull driver on a Red Bull contract. I just need to keep performing as I am, keep going for it and keeping faith, because it would be stupid to suddenly lose it, get angry, as the only thing it leads to is underperforming. I'll keep positive about it."

But in that case, Sainz needs to find a way to force the issue, to make himself so coveted by rival teams that Red Bull is forced to act, in the way it did so ruthlessly with Kvyat last year in order to retain Verstappen. Sainz says his method so far has been to simply focus on getting the best out of himself on a race by race basis.

"There were no clear targets, he explains. "I don't speak to [Red Bull motorsport boss] Helmut Marko and he tells me: 'you have to do this, this, and this,' before a season.

"He used to tell me to win in World Series [Formula Renault 3.5]; [now] he just tells me: 'look, be consistent, go for points, Toro Rosso needs points for the constructors' championship', and that's it.

"I don't report to Helmut Marko, he doesn't report to me, with feedback like, 'you've done well this race, you've done very well, you've done shit'.

"My feeling is that he is happy, and that I am also happy. We both would agree it has been a positive season up until now, and we need to keep bringing points.

"The rest is from myself. I'm the first one who wants to have a good season and perform at a high level. There is the Red Bull pressure, but it has been there since 2010, and I'm used to it now.

"I go into every race weekend fully focused on extracting the maximum out of the car, out of my group of engineers, out of the mechanics, out of myself, and that's the only way to keep positive.

"And it's working, because I can see Red Bull being happy, I can see Toro Rosso being happy, I can see I have 29 points at the moment, which is more than ever, we have a car which is not as it looks to get into the points [on merit] and, yeah, I'm enjoying it."

Those who enjoy their work tend to produce good work, but the challenge for Sainz this season is to deliver consistently outstanding performances amid intensely close competition in F1's midfield this year.

Sainz describes Renault's Nico Hulkenberg as the "standout" performer among his midfield rivals so far in 2017, and makes a special nod towards the strong comeback made by brief retiree Felipe Massa at Williams too.

Given the emerging competitive order within that tight group, and most pertinently the engine advantage enjoyed by Force India and Williams, Sainz feels it is not "very fair to compare" his exploits to those of Sergio Perez, Esteban Ocon, Massa and Lance Stroll, reckoning Hulkenberg, Renault and the Haas drivers to be his main competition.

Red Bull is a demanding taskmaster and will be expecting him to do the unexpected and consistently get in among those drivers who enjoy a competitive advantage. That's what Fernando Alonso is doing regularly for McLaren-Honda; it's what Verstappen did several times in 2015; it's how you make yourself properly stand out from the crowd.

And you have to make sure you stand out for the right reasons. Sainz copped a fair bit of criticism after June's Canadian Grand Prix, with Massa suggesting he should have been handed a Romain Grosjean-style race ban for moving over on Grosjean exiting Turn 1 after the start and triggering a large accident that took Sainz, Grosjean and Massa out of the race.

Sainz insists he simply "didn't see Grosjean" and says he apologised to Haas for his conduct afterwards. He served a three-place grid penalty in Baku and for him, the matter is now closed. He describes these retrospective calls for action as "ungentlemanly".

"In Canada I was already looking at qualifying videos from Baku last year - I don't keep thinking about what I have done," Sainz says. "I simply didn't see Romain, that's a fact.

"Suddenly, you get to Baku and you see people asking for race bans for something that happened two weeks ago. When you share a paddock, you share a sport, we are all racers here and we are all gentlemen, I just don't find it very nice from their side."

But this is not the first time Sainz has been penalised for moving over unfairly on a rival. He was penalised for a similar move on Alonso in Mexico last year, while he also picked up a penalty for a collision with Stroll in Bahrain this season, and needs to ensure these don't become a bad habit that eventually undo him, as happened to Grosjean in 2012.

Grosjean's Haas team boss Gunther Steiner says such moves are damaging Sainz's reputation as a driver, that he is "better than that".

That said, Sainz's former team-mate Verstappen knows what it's like to become embroiled in a major storm over driving standards and emerge the other side. The FIA even moved to clarify the rules following Verstappen's repeated jinking defensive moves under braking last year, which provoked a barrage of criticism.

Verstappen simply shrugged this off and his reputation as one of F1's most outstanding and exciting young talents has not been diminished. Tainted with a serious coat of ruthlessness perhaps, but no more than that really.

The rate of Verstappen's ascent to the top of Formula 1 casts a long shadow over other young drivers. Williams technical chief Paddy Lowe admits rookie Lance Stroll constantly compares himself to Verstappen. It's only natural that youngsters would look at what Verstappen has achieved, how he has achieved it, and feel they must at least match that rate of progression to stand any chance of being taken seriously.

For someone like Sainz, who has raced alongside Verstappen in the same team in F1, one wonders if he will forever find his card marked by the fact Red Bull chose to promote Verstappen over him after the first four races of 2016. Does he not feel as though he will forever be enveloped by Verstappen's shadow?

"I think that was there from the first two years," Sainz concedes. "There was this issue, this situation, where there was always going to be one guy shining a bit more because of the age.

"But about halfway [through] last year it disappeared, and since then every time I've performed I've received the credits I've deserved - not more, not less.

"I don't feel the shadow of anyone since then. Now I'm performing and I am my own man, and every time I perform well everyone sees it and is happy."

Everyone including a certain triple world champion. It's the kind of impression Sainz needs to make again and again, to ensure he moulds himself into a competitive proposition that, like Verstappen before him, simply cannot be ignored.

If Red Bull blocks the route to his ultimate ambition, then he will need to take matters into his own hands and forge his own path. If that happens, Red Bull will lose its insurance policy in the driver market.

If that happens, so be it. Sainz is understandably loyal to Red Bull, he owes his entire career to date to the energy drink giant after all, but he also owes it to himself to put his own interests first.

He needs to be the one in the driving seat, both on and off the track. His ultimate future in F1 depends on it.