Carlos Sainz beat Lewis Hamilton to a 2025 podium. That sentence alone was always going to set the paddock on fire.
Williams drank the champagne in Baku; Ferrari didn’t. Inevitably, the chatter machine kicked in: did Maranello back the wrong horse? Is Sainz the one that got away? Are Ferrari and Hamilton already a mismatch? It’s great debate fodder, but it’s also a snapshot from a very long season.
Sainz’s podium worked because it fit the mood music. Williams under James Vowles has been selling a project for 18 months, brick by brick, hire by hire. Sainz bought in. He’s not strolling around Grove with a magic wand, but he is exactly the kind of detail-obsessed operator Williams hasn’t had since, frankly, a long time ago. When the opportunity came, he converted. That tells you plenty about the Sainz/Vowles pairing and a team that believes again.
Ferrari and Hamilton? That was always going to be messier on the timeline. Hamilton left not just a team but a decade-plus of muscle memory: systems, language, power unit characteristics, even how the steering wheel “talks” to him. Drivers can be superhuman, but they’re not immune to habit. You don’t unlearn 18 years of Mercedes cues overnight. He’ll adapt; the question is how quickly Ferrari can meet him halfway.
The problem for Hamilton is optics. Podiums are currency, and he hasn’t banked one yet in red. Qualifying has set the tone: too many Saturdays starting on the wrong row, too much management on Sundays. Ferrari’s race team can still be slick, but when you start in the weeds, you spend your afternoon picking gravel out of your teeth. Hamilton knows it. He’s said it without the headlines: give me a better grid slot and the rest gets easier.
None of that has stopped the commentary carousel. The romantic take is that Ferrari should’ve stuck with the proven Sainz/Leclerc axis and banked continuity. The spicier take calls it buyer’s remorse. The reality is more boring and more accurate: both things can be true. Sainz leaving was a blow; Hamilton is still a hugely valuable bet for Ferrari’s future.
And remember, “future” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. The 2026 reset is looming with new power units and active aero. Even the most settled driver-car combos are going to feel like they’ve stepped onto a different planet. If you’re Ferrari, having Hamilton embedded a year early has logic written all over it. If you’re Williams, wringing a trophy out of 2025 is oxygen for the factory and a statement to sponsors that the climb is real. Everybody’s playing their hand.
There’s also a human element you can’t spreadsheet. Sainz is a momentum driver: give him a platform and clear feedback, and his confidence snowballs. The Williams garage reflects that. Hamilton, on the other hand, radiates expectation. Ferrari haven’t just signed lap time; they’ve signed pressure, profile, and a standard he’s carried for a generation. That can agitate a team in the short term and sharpen it in the long term. Both outcomes can happen at once.
The head-to-head scoreline, then? Not decided. Not close. Not even the right way to think about it in May. If Sainz and Williams nick another big result, the drumbeat will get louder. If Hamilton strings together clean Saturdays and Ferrari unlocks a little more balance, the podium will come and the noise will turn. Neither narrative is permanent in a 24-race championship.
What will decide the story is the stuff we don’t see on TV: how fast Hamilton and Ferrari converge on a common language; how Williams sustain development without wobbling; which team executes better when the margins are only tenths wide and one slow stop costs you everything. It’s prosaic. It’s also how this sport works.
So, by all means enjoy the intrigue. Sainz wearing blue and standing on a rostrum before Hamilton does it in scarlet is not nothing. It’s just not everything. The bar for Ferrari and Hamilton isn’t P3 anyway. It’s wins. It’s a title challenge. If Sainz and Williams get to either of those first, then we’ve got a different conversation on our hands.
Until then, one snapshot doesn’t make a portrait. It just makes a great headline.
