Carlos Sainz: Williams demands a “particular” technique — and he’s not in love with it
Carlos Sainz knows how to make a complicated car go fast. He proved that at Ferrari. But after the summer, and after another empty Sunday at Monza, the Williams still isn’t speaking his language.
“It’s not a car I love to drive,” Sainz said, candid as ever in the Monza paddock. “It needs a very particular thing with the driving.” He added that, on balance, he’s felt “relatively good” in the cockpit this year — the problem is corralling that feeling into a clean result.
That last part is starting to sting. Sainz hasn’t scored in six straight races. His most recent point was a lonely P10 in Montreal back in June. At Monza, Alex Albon hauled the other Williams to seventh, while Sainz wrestled battery deployment issues. Depending on how close he ran in traffic and where the temperatures sat, he said he was “losing a lot of deployment” at crucial moments.
It all feeds into the broader picture: for Sainz, 2025 began as a sharp left turn. Told before 2024 that he’d be replaced at Ferrari by Lewis Hamilton, Sainz responded with his best campaign yet — wins in Australia and Mexico and a steady drumbeat of podium form — then walked into a Williams that rewards a style he doesn’t naturally prefer. Meanwhile, Albon is in his fourth full season with the team, and that familiarity is telling. With eight races to go, Albon holds a 54-point cushion.
Sainz’s verdict? The raw pace isn’t the crisis. The execution is.
“My qualifying record and race pace have been good,” he said. “But putting the result together has been difficult — little incidents, strategy, new things. We’ve not caught a break.”
If that all sounds familiar, it’s because Hamilton has been saying much the same thing in red. The seven-time champion — the man who took Sainz’s Ferrari seat — left Monza with sixth place, his best result since the British Grand Prix. He also left sounding like a virtuoso playing someone else’s instrument.
“Ultimately I’m driving with an alien driving style,” Hamilton said of the SF-25. He talked about spending years at Mercedes evolving a car he knew “inside and out,” only to arrive at Maranello and find a machine that wants to be hustled in ways that aren’t instinctive. Ferrari’s engine braking characteristics — distinct from what he was used to — plus getting fully comfortable on Brembo materials have added layers to the learning curve. That awkward spin at Spa earlier this year? Not a coincidence.
The thread connecting both stories is less about talent and more about fit. Drivers at this level don’t suddenly forget how to drive; they recalibrate. Some cars want a pin-sharp front end and ruthless rotation on entry; others ask for patience and a soft-pawed trail into the apex before stomping on the throttle. Some demand you bully the rear brakes to help the nose; others will spit you into the gravel for trying. That “particular thing” Sainz mentions isn’t code for slow — it’s code for different. And different takes time.
For Williams, there are green shoots. The car’s underlying speed has been visible often enough — particularly in Albon’s hands — to suggest the points are on the table when the windows line up. Sainz’s pace snapshots on Fridays and in laps that never make the highlight reel back that up. But the sport doesn’t pay out for might-have-beens, and the calendar’s starting to run out.
Ferrari’s outlook is more nuanced. Hamilton’s race-long comments about “getting better and better” as he adapts imply there’s a ceiling still to be reached when the SF-25 is driven the way it wants to be. He’s also hoping next year’s car won’t force the same choices: “Hopefully I can go back a little bit towards what I would choose to do.”
Sainz would probably second that. He’s not sulking, just laying out the reality of an odd first date that hasn’t turned into a romance. Battery gremlins at Monza didn’t help, but Williams’ broader task is clear: either bring the car closer to Sainz, or help Sainz get closer to the car — and quickly.
There’s still time. Eight grands prix is a long time when qualifying clicks, the starts are tidy, the strategy isn’t compromised by traffic, and the car stops playing tricks with deployment. But it will take a clean weekend, then another, to break the pattern.
Two drivers, two new homes, and the same headline: the car is fast — if you drive it a way you’d never choose. In 2025, style points are literally points.
