Carlos Sainz has never been shy about calling it as he sees it. And from where he’s sitting now — a Williams racing suit swapped for Ferrari red — the Spaniard reckons one of the biggest career calls of his life probably cost him a crack at the title.
If I’d stayed at McLaren, we’d be fighting for a World Championship, he told DAZN in a recent sit-down, reflecting on the two-season spell alongside Lando Norris that rebuilt his reputation and put him back on the podium radar. Those McLaren years? Perhaps the best of my career, where I got the most out of the car I had. It was the first place in F1 where I really felt loved and supported.
Sainz has done the tour: Toro Rosso to Renault, then McLaren, Ferrari and now Williams — five badges in 11 seasons, and always the kind of driver who squeezes what’s there and a little bit more. The move that still defines the story, though, is Ferrari. He jumped at Maranello’s call, as almost any driver would. Back when he made the switch, Ferrari felt like destiny in waiting. With all my respect for McLaren, when Ferrari knocks, you don’t say no, he told AS back then. And even now, he isn’t apologising for it. Any driver in my position would have gone, he says. I wanted to prove I deserved to be there, to fight for podiums and wins.
But hindsight bites. While Ferrari’s title drought drags on, McLaren has surged back to the sharp end with Norris and Oscar Piastri. Sainz can see the alternate timeline: stay in papaya, ride the upswing, turn consistency into contention. The sting is real — and human.
There’s another plot running in parallel, though, and it’s the one Sainz is betting his future on. After Ferrari signed Lewis Hamilton for 2025, Sainz reset and signed a multi-year deal with Williams, a move that raised eyebrows and then quietly started to make sense. Yes, it’s a step from the sport’s most famous team to a project still rebuilding in Grove. And yes, 2025 has been a grind at times as he adapts to the FW47 and a very different way of going racing.
But Sainz is playing the long game. F1 will tear up the technical script for 2026 with new cars and new power units, the kind of reset that can shuffle the pack in a heartbeat. For a driver who’s made a career out of extracting value on Sundays, a rules reboot is an opportunity — and Williams is banking on it.
I’m doing very well at Williams and I think it’s a very good place for my future, he says. If we manage to take Williams back up and achieve a podium or a victory one day, that would excite me the most — it’s my life project.
That line tells you plenty. Sainz knows how this sounds from the outside: the guy who left a rising McLaren, won races at Ferrari, then chose the hard road. But the Williams chapter isn’t about nostalgia or a paycheck. It’s about timing, leverage, and the kind of legacy that doesn’t come from parachuting into a ready-made winner.
He’s not pretending 2025 has been anything but work. The FW47’s window has been narrow, the midfield brutal, and the margin for error microscopic. That’s where Sainz’s value shows, though: methodical feedback, clean execution, no panic. He’s seen enough F1 cycles to recognise when patience pays — and when to double down.
And there’s a twist of irony in all this. The same ruthlessness that took him to Ferrari and cost him that imagined McLaren title fight is what now keeps him pushing at Williams. He’ll live with the what-ifs. He’d rather be the guy who took the path that could change a team’s direction than the one who coasted on a sure thing.
So does Sainz really believe he’d be in a title scrap if he’d stayed? Absolutely. Does he regret not sticking around? Not for a second, if you take him at his word. Different bets, different payoffs.
We’ll get the real verdict soon enough. If 2026 marks one of those generational resets and Williams nails its shot, this detour could age very well. And if it doesn’t? Sainz has already proved he can climb again. Either way, he’s backed his instincts — the same instincts that made Ferrari irresistible once upon a time, and Williams compelling now.
