If we’re talking about more than a couple wins over two seasons, I think it would matter, but Singapore was a pretty fluky race. Sainz did an amazing job in Australia, but he’s not even the fastest on his team most races. Leclerc had the pace to win in Las Vegas last year, but an unlucky safety car took away his chance at a win so it’s not like Sainz is the only guy who’s shown the pace to challenge Max the last couple years.
I do think Sainz gets underrated a lot, and he’s a top 5 driver on the grid, but saying he’s the second best driver in the grid is quite a leap, especially for a guy that’s lost to his teammate 2 of the last 3 years and is down by 62.5 points to Leclerc over the last three seasons with Leclerc losing quite a bit more points due to bad reliability than Sainz over that time. If you equal out reliability, he’s down by over 100 points to his teammate over 3 seasons.