Williams didn’t hire Carlos Sainz to qualify well and fade. Yet 14 races into his new life in Grove, the Spaniard admits the problem isn’t pace — it’s execution.
“We’re still not getting any better at putting things together,” Sainz said over the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend, cutting an honest, slightly exasperated figure. “But it will come at some point… I’m pretty sure the result is about to come.”
The headline numbers are stark. Sainz’s best finish so far is eighth, and he trails Alex Albon by 38 points in the Drivers’ standings. That’s not the story Williams envisioned after prising him from Ferrari, especially when the FW47 has often looked tidy in race trim. The twist: despite Sainz’s thin haul, Williams remains on course for its best Constructors’ finish since 2017, holding fifth with an 18-point cushion over Aston Martin. The team trajectory is up; Sainz’s scoreboard isn’t.
He doesn’t believe this is a case of struggling to adapt to the car. “I was quite quick straight away,” he said, pointing instead to a run of weekends where small moments have snowballed into lost points. Strategy roulette here, traffic there, the odd scruffy stop — death by a thousand cuts. It’s been the theme of his side of the garage since round one.
Sainz has also been vocal about F1’s lack of testing and how it punishes drivers changing teams. He’s not wrong. Even Lewis Hamilton’s early months at Ferrari have underlined how steep that learning curve is in 2025. “Fans can underestimate how complex it is,” Sainz argued earlier this year, and the evidence backs him up.
Nico Rosberg, never shy with a sharp edge, called Sainz’s deficit to Albon “very, very uncomfortable.” Hard to dispute. Albon has been relentlessly tidy on Sundays and opportunistic when the midfield scrums break his way. That’s the standard — and the yardstick Sainz is measured against.
Still, inside Williams there’s a clear eye on the bigger picture. Fifth in the championship would be a serious marker of progress, and momentum matters with the 2026 rules reset looming. Sainz echoed that: bank the step now, cash it in later. “It would show the positive direction of the team, the gathering momentum into ’26 with all the big changes,” he said.
So the tension is obvious: a driver searching for a clean weekend; a team proving it’s ready for the next tier. If Sainz can finally knit qualifying, strategy and race pace together, the results column should start matching the promise. He thinks it’s close. Williams could use the confirmation.
