Carlos Sainz to Williams: Five reasons why surprise F1 2025 move isn’t as crazy as it sounds

Oliver Harden
A close-up shot of Carlos Sainz with a prominent Williams logo alongside him

Carlos Sainz has signed a two-year contract with Williams with 'options to extend'

James Vowles put it best when asked about his public pursuit of Carlos Sainz over the Canadian Grand Prix weekend in June: “Why Williams?”

Why Williams indeed. Why swap Ferrari for a team who have finished bottom of the Constructors’ Championship for four of the last six seasons? Yet overlook the recent results and a move to Williams could prove inspired for Sainz. So why Williams? Here’s why.

Why Carlos Sainz to Williams for F1 2025 actually makes sense

This article was originally published on June 14 2024

Severe reservations over Audi F1

So what first attracted you to Williams, Carlos?

Was it the inspiring leadership of James Vowles and complete confidence in his long-term vision? Hm? The team’s encouraging progress over the last couple of years, maybe?

Or was it, plainly and simply, driven by severe reservations over Audi’s F1 project and a fear for the direction your career could take if you make the wrong choice at this critical stage?

Even before his Ferrari exit was announced, Sainz and Audi had the feel of a marriage made in heaven – a classy driver, at just the right age and with a respectable amount of success behind him, joining forces with a classy brand and a project managed by none other than his former team principal at McLaren.

It all, if anything, made too much sense. Especially considering the pre-existing links between Audi and the Sainz family, Carlos’ WRC and Dakar-winning father openly nudging him in that direction.

Yet, in truth, there is little so far to suggest Audi’s highly anticipated F1 entry will be a success from 2026.

It’s not just the current results of the Sauber team (though there remains a nagging sense that Audi, perhaps fatally, backed the wrong horse when selecting their “strategic partner” for F1 2026), or the suspicion that it will take years (certainly more than Sainz is prepared to give) to build a winning team.

It’s the feeling that Audi, both technically and politically, do not yet realise what they have let themselves in for in Formula 1.

Rumours have persisted for some time that Audi’s engine preparations are not exactly going to plan, with Helmut Marko letting slip last August that the German manufacturer (and, compellingly, Ferrari too) were “miles” off Mercedes and Red Bull in the race to be ready for 2026.

Audi were forced to address concerns last year that they were considering cancelling their F1 plans before they had even arrived following high-level management changes, with more coming in July when Mattia Binotto arrived as Andreas Seidl and Oliver Hoffmann, heavily rumoured to have been embroiled in a behind-the-scenes power struggle, were both ousted.

Does that inspire much confidence in you?

Less than two years out from 2026, there is every possibility that Audi could head the way of Toyota or Renault/Alpine – a bureaucratic, muddled, fundamentally flawed F1 operation with a greater focus on marketing than performance – than follow the template of success set by Mercedes.

For as long as they remain all theory and until they can silence those doubts – and that will start by achieving the results on track to reflect their enormous potential – Audi are best treated with a degree of caution by drivers of Sainz’s calibre.

Mercedes power for the F1 2026 revolution

For an indication of just how beneficial it can be for a team to have the right engine at the right time, look no further than the transformation in Williams’ fortunes in the first year of F1’s V6 hybrid era in 2014.

Having scored just five points across the final season of V8s in 2013, Williams collected 320 – as well as nine podiums and even a pole position – the following year, propelling the team from ninth to third in the Constructors’ Championship.

With their best result in the standings since 2003 – and ahead of historical rivals Ferrari and McLaren – it was enough to convince some that Williams were finally back.

Williams never were back, of course, and their gradual decline as that rules cycle unfolded was a clear indication that access to the best powertrain had papered over many of the cracks at Grove.

But how it papered over those cracks.

And if the same were happen again in 2026, a team principal as sensible and logical as Vowles would surely stand a far better chance of bottling that bounce – of sustaining it, of ensuring it was no fluke – than the previous regime.

Who will be the ones to crack the F1 2026 regulations?

Sainz himself has referred to it as a “lottery” but there does seem to be a growing confidence that Mercedes are on to a good thing with their preparations for F1’s brave new world.

Which would be no surprise, given how brilliantly Merc aced the 2014 rules and their track record of producing the most powerful and reliable engines over the last two decades or more.

It is true that Mercedes HPP is not the Mercedes HPP it used to be – having lost Andy Cowell, one of the key pillars behind the team’s post-2014 dominance, in 2020 – but it remains best in class and the engine operation best placed to get 2026 right from the off.

If the Mercedes team don’t really want him, a Mercedes engine really could be the next-best thing.

The Pat Fry effect

But what if it’s different this time? What if in 2026 Williams can marry a Mercedes engine boost with a great leap forward on the chassis side?

That’s where Pat Fry comes in.

A highly experienced engineer, Fry has developed a reputation as an F1 firefighter over recent years, bringing some old-fashioned logic to the table to put struggling teams back on track.

When McLaren hit rock bottom in 2018 – the year they discovered Honda wasn’t the root of their problems after all – it was Fry who kickstarted the recovery with the back-to-basics 2019 car (driven by Sainz), which would evolve into the car with which Daniel Ricciardo ended the team’s nine-year wait for a win at Monza 2021.

By that stage, Fry had already move on to Alpine, where the car he produced for the new ground-effect era in 2022 brought fourth in the Constructors’ standings and arguably the team’s most convincing season since Renault returned to F1 in 2015.

Fry has admitted to being surprised by what he found upon his arrival at Williams, claiming that while some areas “are, if anything better” than his previous employers others are as much as two decades out of date.

Yet Williams’ gradual improvement – even if the badly born and overweight 2024 car has not yet shown it – since his appointment last summer is a reflection of Fry’s contribution.

With a clean slate for F1 2026, he could work wonders.

More flexibility on the driver market

Had he signed the “very lucrative” contract (Marko’s words) offered to him by Audi, Sainz would have been set for life.

He would have been be paid handsomely over the duration of a likely three-year deal, which would have take him into his mid-30s, after which one of those cushty ambassadorial roles would have no doubt awaited.

In other words, there would have been no easy way out if another opportunity came along once he has committed himself to Audi.

The landscape could be different at Williams, a team who would consider themselves lucky to have him and have potentially granted Sainz a greater degree of flexibility, already referring to “options to extend” beyond 2026.

Max Verstappen suddenly joins Mercedes? Red Bull may not have fancied Max v Carlos again, but it’s much easier to sign Sainz with Verstappen no longer around.

Lewis Hamilton vs Charles Leclerc turns toxic in the first season, which ends with one leaving Ferrari?

Right, says Fred, come back Carlos. It really was a terrible mistake to let you go in the first place.

The driver market may look relatively settled now, but all it takes is one Verstappen bombshell for unexpected opportunities to open up anywhere from McLaren (if Red Bull then attempt to buy one of Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri out of their contracts) to Aston Martin if Max’s Red Bull exit lights up Fernando Alonso’s eyes.

If the unthinkable does happen, it makes sense for Sainz to prepare by placing himself in the position of maximum opportunity.

Beat Alex Albon and people will take notice

Rewind a few months and Albon was being described by certain elements of the F1 media as the key to the driver market, attracting interest from anyone from Audi and Mercedes to Red Bull and Ferrari.

Regardless of whether he was ever under serious consideration by some, if any, of these teams, the sudden hype surrounding Albon – who previously had the light taken from his eyes by Verstappen at Red Bull in 2019/20 – pointed to the simple truth that people just love a plucky underdog story in sport.

And if an unfancied driver can bring success to an unfancied team, the abilities of that driver tend to be wildly – sometimes, and definitely in the case of Albon, disproportionately – exaggerated among the fans and media, often building an almost irresistible momentum behind them.

The Albon effect could be particularly appealing for Sainz, for if he could deliver results that Williams haven’t since the days of George Russell – a spirited podium, maybe, or a surprise pole position in a wet qualifying session – and put the results of the eminently beatable Albon into some context, his reputation would also shoot to an all-time high.

The notion that Sainz should never have found himself out of a race-winning seat in the first place, and must be restored to one at the earliest convenience, will spread rapidly.

Sainz has specialised in defiance all his career, from when he was initially overlooked for a 2015 Toro Rosso seat – not just surviving but thriving alongside a young Verstappen – to finding his way to Ferrari after being turned away by Renault.

A move to Williams may be perceived as the end of his career as an elite F1 driver, yet it would be so typical of Sainz to prove the doubters wrong.

Not for the first time, underestimate him at your peril.

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