Carlos Sainz has never looked like a driver who needs his hand holding, but Mattia Binotto’s latest retelling of the 2024 driver-market scramble underlines just how deliberately he’s plotted his own course — even when the most obvious next step was being pushed from home.
Speaking on the *Beyond the Grid* podcast, Binotto said Sainz’s decision to sign a multi-year deal with Williams rather than line himself up with Audi’s 2026 arrival wasn’t just a professional call; it was a personal one too. In Binotto’s telling, Sainz effectively chose independence over the neat narrative.
The theory at the time was simple. Ferrari’s pre-season announcement in 2024 that Lewis Hamilton would take Sainz’s seat from 2025 blew the market open, and Audi’s impending entry — via a Sauber takeover for the 2026 season — seemed tailor-made for a proven, available, top-line driver. Add in the not-so-small detail that Sainz’s father, Carlos Sainz Sr, had just won the 2024 Dakar Rally with Audi and was understood to be keen on his son joining the project early, and the paddock could practically write the press release itself.
Sainz didn’t.
Binotto, who had signed Sainz for Ferrari in 2021 and knows him well, said he was content with how those conversations played out — and, crucially, he didn’t paint Audi as having “missed out” on a deal that was ever on the brink of being done.
“Obviously, we had a good relationship in Ferrari,” Binotto said. “I employed him in Ferrari, so he knew that I trusted him as much as I trust him today.
“It was good to meet and have a discussion or a chat with him. He evaluated, but as for everyone, I’m always very respectful to the decisions of the people and if he decided for a different way, I’m happy for him.”
Then came the line that will resonate with anyone who’s watched Sainz navigate this sport with a slightly different compass to most.
“Because honestly, I think he made his own choice and that was important,” Binotto added. “I would even say that he made his own choice, and not his dad’s choice, which is great for him.”
It’s an unusually frank glimpse into a dynamic F1 rarely acknowledges out loud: family influence, legacy expectations, the subtle pressure of brand ties, and the temptation to follow the story rather than the substance. Sainz’s career has been built on rejecting the comfortable option — even when that option comes with powerful allies, an easy marketing hook, and the warm glow of inevitability.
Choosing Williams, in that context, reads less like a left turn and more like a driver betting on a project he can help shape, rather than stepping into one that would come with an entire manufacturer’s gravitational pull from day one. If you’re Sainz, joining Audi in the run-up to 2026 would have meant living inside a narrative before a lap had even been completed: the Spanish star, the famous father, the Audi link, the new era. Williams, for all its history, offered something different — a chance to be the centre of the plan rather than a chapter in somebody else’s launch campaign.
Binotto, for his part, also made clear Audi didn’t end up empty-handed. He pointed to the opportunity it created to bring in Gabriel Bortoleto, a move he said he was “very pleased” with. That, too, speaks to the reality of modern F1 recruitment: sometimes a “no” from an established name opens the door to the driver you can actually build around long-term.
What’s changed since those 2024 crossroads is that Sainz’s Williams story has become a little more complicated in public. Williams’ start to 2026 has been described as disappointing, and as always in this sport, that’s enough to set the whisper network going. Both Sainz and Alex Albon have been linked with possible moves away, the kind of chatter that tends to flare up when results don’t match ambition.
Team principal James Vowles has tried to shut that down early. In comments that read like a pre-emptive boundary line ahead of the next round of contract speculation, Vowles insisted both drivers are committed and that the project is bigger than a scrappy Saturday here or a Q3 cameo there.
“The drivers aren’t here or interested in being just into Q3,” Vowles said. “But they are interested in being demonstrated that we have facilities behind us that are able to fix and remedy problems when they come up and I think that’s the main element.
“I think we’re on the right pathway for that, but we haven’t done enough yet. In terms of ‘silly season’, speak to Alex, speak to Carlos. They want to be part of this journey.”
It’s a telling phrase, “journey”, one that teams reach for when they’re asking drivers to swallow short-term pain for long-term gain. For Sainz, the interesting part is whether that bargain still holds when he knows — and everyone else knows — that he could’ve chosen a manufacturer-backed path into 2026 instead.
Binotto’s remarks don’t just reopen an old driver-market subplot; they sharpen the stakes of Sainz’s present. If he picked Williams to be on his own terms, then the next decision — staying the course or pivoting again — will be judged by that same standard. Not the obvious choice. Not the fashionable one. His one.
