F1 Driver Carlos Sainz Says a 15-Minute Hot Shower Is His Wellness Secret

Reported by Harper's Bazaar.

There is something almost offensive about how good Carlos Sainz's hair looks the moment he pulls off a racing helmet. The Williams Formula 1 driver — who spends his weekends hurtling around circuits at 200 mph and his weekdays crossing time zones like the rest of us cross streets — somehow emerges from race weekends looking like he stepped off a set. According to Harper's Bazaar, the secret is genuinely, almost annoyingly, simple.

Sainz, 31, is a L'Oréal Paris global ambassador, which means he shows up at Cannes alongside the kind of people who have entire glam squads on retainer. His own approach is more utilitarian: L'Oréal Men Expert Hydra Energetic daily, SPF 50 on heavy sun days (golf, cycling — yes, he does both), and Elvive Growth Booster as a pre-helmet shield against sweat damage. For the actual cut, he admits he still hasn't nailed down the language. His standing instruction to his barber is essentially "not too short, but cut it" — a direction every woman who has ever left a salon fighting back tears will find deeply relatable. When L'Oréal's in-house hair stylist Stephane Lancien steps in on brand days, Sainz says the man can salvage any length. The rest of us are on our own.

The Recovery Ritual That Actually Makes Sense

Post-race, Sainz doesn't reach for a cold plunge or a green juice. He takes a 10-to-15-minute hot shower — sometimes a full bath — and then gets eight hours of sleep. That's it. He describes the shower as a "download" period, a space where the adrenaline dissipates and the day starts to process itself. The sleep does the analysis: he says he wakes up able to evaluate a win or a loss with actual clarity, rather than the distorted lens of exhaustion and cortisol. For someone managing chronic jet lag and the psychological weight of elite competition, the routine is less a luxury than load-bearing infrastructure.

On the road, his emotional anchor is scent — his aftershave, and the smell of clean clothes packed from home. It's a small, human detail from someone whose calendar reads like a travel agent's fever dream: Australia, China, Japan, Miami, Canada, Cannes, repeat. His advice to anyone operating under similar pressure is to build routines and actually protect them. "If you go back to the routines that have brought you success, you'll have the self-confidence to say: I've done this before." He also pushes for radical self-honesty — breaking down what worked, what didn't, and refusing to fudge the answer.

Whether you're piloting a Williams or just trying to survive a brutal quarter at work, the framework holds: anchor yourself in the small rituals, protect your sleep like it's a contract obligation, and be honest enough with yourself to know the difference between a bad day and a bad pattern.

Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.