Carlos Sainz thinks what bruised Williams in Brazil could be exactly what unlocks it in Las Vegas.
Interlagos was grim for the Grove team. Sainz’s afternoon was cooked within a handful of corners after contact with Lewis Hamilton forced him to wrestle a damaged front wing, and a slow stop only deepened the hole. He trudged home 13th; Alex Albon couldn’t nick a point either, finishing 11th. That made it three straight races without a score for Williams, who remain on 111 points in the Constructors’ Championship, holding fifth with a 29-point cushion over Racing Bulls after their 10-point haul in São Paulo.
It wasn’t just luck. Interlagos exposes cars through those long, loaded medium-speed arcs in the middle sector — precisely where the FW47 felt at its most compromised.
“For me, as a team, it’s just important to understand how we can keep improving the weakness of the long, medium-low speed long corner that always compromises us,” Sainz said. “Luckily, we have Vegas next, which is completely the opposite.
“Probably the cars that were strong here will be weak in Vegas, and vice versa.
“As a team, we need to get on top of those issues which compromise, and will compromise Qatar. Keen to keep working as a team on that.”
Vegas is different. The Strip’s stop-start rhythm asks for big stability on the brakes, traction out of slow corners, and strong efficiency on the straights — less of Interlagos’ never‑ending, tyre‑leaning mid-speed sequences. On paper, that should ease the load on Williams’ weak spot and play to the FW47’s better traits.
The flip side? Williams don’t have much to shout about from Vegas yet. The team’s best result there is a 12th for Albon from the inaugural race, and last season Franco Colapinto was their only finisher in 14th after clouting the wall in qualifying. So while the layout looks friendlier, the team still needs a clean weekend — something they didn’t get in Brazil.
This season has, nonetheless, marked a step forward. Williams ended 2024 ninth with 17 points; they matched that after Round 2 in 2025 and have kept banking results since. Sainz delivered a podium — the team’s first since George Russell was classified second in the rain-hit 2021 Belgian Grand Prix — which underlined the trajectory James Vowles has been insisting is coming, even if it’s occasionally untidy round the edges.
Away from the stopwatch, the rebuild is real. Atlassian came onboard for 2025 in what Williams calls its biggest sponsorship deal, and Dorilton Capital’s chequebook remains wide open. The ownership injected around £550 million last year alone, part of a reported £1.5bn poured into the operation since 2020. That scale of investment is why Williams can talk about wind tunnel upgrades, staff expansion, and deeper simulation tools with a straight face — and why its estimated valuation, pegged at roughly $2.1bn, has room to grow if the results keep moving in the same direction. Look at the market: McLaren’s been valued at around $5bn, Mercedes at $6bn. There’s headroom if Williams keep converting infrastructure into points.
Short term, though, the job is simpler: stop the slide and cash in where the calendar allows. Las Vegas should be one of those places. The cars that danced at Interlagos might find themselves out of step on the Strip; Williams, with a tidy low-drag package and a driver who’s all-in on late-braking street circuits, could use that to reset the momentum before a Qatar round that will again stress their known weakness.
Sainz isn’t dressing it up. The medium-speed, long-duration corners still need fixing. But if the Brazilian hangover came from that specific flaw, Sin City offers the hair of the dog. Different problem set, different opportunity.
If Williams execute, expect them back in the points. If they don’t, the Constructors’ table tightens, the narrative shifts, and the spotlight turns up another notch on a project that’s built to do more than just pick off the odd top 10.
Your move, Williams.
