Williams ‘not fighting for much’ as Carlos Sainz makes Aston Martin claim
Aston Martin is in a "different league" for race pace, says Carlos Sainz
Williams is ahead of only Cadillac at the moment, while Aston Martin is now in a “different league” when it comes to race pace.
That is the eye-opening statement made by Williams driver Carlos Sainz, who argues that the recent trend points towards this being the true position of Williams at present, rather than a difficult Dutch Grand Prix being a negative outlier for the team.
Carlos Sainz claims Aston Martin now in ‘different league’ to Williams
Following the positive debut of Aston Martin‘s B-spec AMR26 in Hungary, further chassis revisions arrived for the Dutch Grand Prix, as did Honda’s new engine.
Fernando Alonso went on to score only Aston Martin’s second points finish of the season, securing P9 at Zandvoort.
As Aston Martin and Honda makes strides in its redemption story, Williams increasingly appears to be fading as a competitor to the Silverstone-based squad.
Not since Monaco has Williams scored points. Sainz last scored in Montreal.
Williams was showing little sign of ending that baron spell at Zandvoort before Sainz and teammate Alex Albon collided at Turn 1 late in the race.
Following the race, Sainz was asked whether this is where Williams expected to be in terms of pace at Zandvoort.
“We are pretty much where we expected, which is towards the back,” the Spaniard told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets.
“We are only quicker than Cadillac at the moment. You saw the Astons, in race pace, they are a different league right now. We couldn’t fight them. We couldn’t fight anyone really.
“At the end of the race, Alex and I are just having fun, and unfortunately, I did this mistake where I was caught off-guard with a front lock into Turn 1 on the bump.
“But honestly, it’s not like we were fighting for much.”
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Sainz and Williams has encountered a major F1 2026 setback in regards to the shared vision of challenging the sport’s frontrunners down the line. Nonetheless, Sainz recently re-affirmed his commitment to this project for F1 2027.
The road to recovery will not be simple. Sainz does not believe that Zandvoort was a negative one-off for Williams.
“I think if you look at the last five races, this is where we’ve been for the last five races, so it is where we are,” he said.
“We’ve had a very tough weekend on my side with some inconsistency of the parts, which haven’t allowed me to set up the car correctly for the race.
“We have to learn from it, as there will be some interesting data points to go through as a team with the struggles that I’ve had, as we will be able to, for sure, conclude on them and probably it will help us to understand better in the future.”
Williams sits P9 in the constructors’ standings, eight points ahead of Aston Martin.
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
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