Sainz sends blunt message to Williams as speculation over exit builds
Sources have told PlanetF1.com that Carlos Sainz is questiong his future with Williams
Carlos Sainz has called on Williams to “do more” as the team continues to struggle in the midfield battle amid mounting speculation that he is questioning his long-term future at the squad.
Williams’ difficult start to F1 2026 has left the team trailing expectations after its FW48 arrived both late and overweight, leaving it on the back foot from the opening rounds of the new regulations cycle.
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Sainz joined Williams as the team looks to rebuild itself into a winning team once again, with the F1 2026 season flagged as something of a relaunch for the once championship-winning operation.
After seven rounds, it sits eighth in the teams’ competition with 11 points, and a best result of eighth in Monaco.
Multiple sources have told PlanetF1.com that the situation has left Sainz questioning his future with the squad, with the Spaniard said to be eyeing up Audi as an option – the option that he didn’t choose two years ago.
However, with Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto under contract for F1 2027, that door is currently closed.
In the wake of a disappointing Barcelona GP, Sainz issued something of a hurry-up call to his team.
“I know what’s coming, and for sure what’s coming normally in this team upgrades really tend to work,” the four-time race-winner said.
“But at the same time I’m not sure if it’s enough to cut the gap that we have in this sort of tracks [Barcelona].
“We need to do more than what we are doing already.
“Every week for the team it’s super important to find points of downforce or kilos of weight.
“I realize that the team is pushing flat out, at the moment we are all pushing with everything we have.”
Williams team boss James Vowles has not shied away from the predicament the team finds itself, conceding that things haven’t gone as planned.
The squad is a vastly different operation to what it once was, with owners Dorilton Capital having invested heavily in its quest to return to championship contention in the long term.
More immediate efforts are also being made to reduce the weight of the car, and find overall performance, but that remains an ongoing process with no silver bullet.
In the interim, performance is likely to be below what the team had hoped for this season, with more results like Barcelona a distinct possibility.
Both Sainz and Alex Albon struggled at the sweeping Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, an event the team predicted would expose the frailties of the FW48.
Sainz could do no better than 12th, two laps down, while a bizarre camera housing issue saw Albon’s race transformed into a test session; 11 laps down at the chequered flag, he was not officially classified as a finisher.
“The gap to the midfield teams is exactly, more or less, what we thought,” Sainz said of the performance deficit to Williams’ midfield rivals.
“It’s just that we’ve come to a track where there’s medium and high speed, and we had a big problem in medium and high speed tracks.
“In Suzuka we were really far away from the midfield, half a lap down.”
Williams introduced a new rear wing for Barcelona, with refinements around Straight Mode fairing in pursuit of more downforce.
It was a small package, but wasn’t enough to make a meaningful gain.
“It shows that even if you improve the others are improving also,” Sainz observed.
“Even if we brought some updates to Miami and Canada, you need to double them up.”
Adding to his Barcelona frustration is the prospect of similarly uncompetitive races to come.
While it’s possible there will be improved form in Austria, the championship then heads to a sequence of venues where Sainz suggests the team will struggle once again.
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“Bit better,” he said of Williams’ chances at the Red Bull Ring.
“But at the same time, it doesn’t give me much of an encouragement, because if then it means that then you go back to these kind of tracks and you suffer as much, you’re down to the characteristics of the track.
“Then, when we go to Silverstone, it will be even tougher.
“I think it’s sort of a temporary relief to go to Canadas, Monacos, Austrias.
“Then you’re going to go to Silverstone, Spas, and Hungary.
“We need to realise that, and don’t leave off the fact that there’s good and bad tracks for us.
“We need to realise that Barcelona is a very good track to measure a car’s performance.
“We were anything between 1.6 and 1.9 seconds from the leaders and almost six-, seven-tenths from the first midfield cars.
“That’s our target.”
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
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