Carlos Sainz throws down Williams challenge after Aston Martin’s stunning turnaround

Carlos Sainz believes Aston Martin’s major upgrade package should prove to Williams that it can follow suit, and that the step forward shouldn’t “scare” his squad.

Williams now appears to be the established team shoring up the back of the grid, following Aston Martin’s step forward with a major upgrade package introduced on the AMR26.

Carlos Sainz: Aston Martin’s progress offers Williams a blueprint

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Aston Martin brought a huge upgrade package to the Hungarian Grand Prix, having opted against introducing more regular smaller updates through the first half of the season.

This had the effect of miring Adrian Newey’s team at the very back, having started on the back foot with an ill-handling car and a below-par power unit, with the development race seeing the two Aston Martins slip to a second or two behind the brand-new Cadillac team.

But the vast update package on the AMR26 saw a clear step forward: while Lance Stroll was eliminated in Q1 after being compromised in his preparations by a suspension failure in FP1, Fernando Alonso made it through into Q2 on merit.

Both Williams drivers were knocked out in Q1 as Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz struggled for any sort of balance or confidence in their cars and, having been eclipsed by Aston Martin, the Spaniard said the evident step should only serve as a “carrot” for James Vowles’ squad.

“I think, as a team, we need to see it in a positive manner because I want everyone to be positive about it rather than scared,” he said, when asked by PlanetF1.com about the performance jump evident from the AMR26.

“Because, if anything for me, it just proves that, when you understand what your limitations are and you see another Formula 1 team with similar facilities to you having such a big turnaround and adding so many points of downforce to the car within six months, the carrot is there for us to prove to them and ourselves that we can do the same.

“And if we’re not doing the same, why? Why don’t we have that capacity? So for me, what is important moving forward is to show that we can also have the capacity to do a turnaround like another midfield team just did in front of us.

“Aston went from having a worse downforce, worse chassis than us to having the best midfield downforce right now.

“So it is there for us to go find the solution to add downforce and find the evolution. So I see it positively in a way that the team should be looking at that and saying, “Yeah, it is possible if you do things right’.

Sainz’s future with Williams is yet to be fully clarified, with the Spaniard open about the fact that he is weighing up his options over the summer break.

Persistent rumours linking him with a possible swap to join Audi in Nico Hulkenberg’s seat are firmly rejected as being a possibility, while the leading non-Williams option appears to be in Alonso’s place, should his compatriot decide to step back from being on the F1 grid.

On Thursday, Sainz spoke about what he’s seen of Williams’ development, having been convinced to join Vowles’ team on a rebuild journey as the Spaniard sought a new home following his forced split from Ferrari.

“I think there’s no secret that my expectations, or let’s say my timeline, for how long it would take me to win a race again and for Williams to be the place to do that, have been delayed by a year or two,” he said.

“It depends on how quickly we manage to bounce back from this situation.

“Obviously, I had in my mind a timeframe that I was willing to accept in order to help this team get back into a winning position, and how long I was willing to wait to be fighting for wins again.

“Clearly, that timeline, unfortunately for all of us, because obviously the team is also affected by it, is going to be longer than we expected, and that path is going to be longer than expected.

“Having said that, I see what the team is investing in the future. I still see the vision of the team being pretty clear. I see how much is going on behind the scenes when you leave the current car performance aside, and this still gives me confidence and motivation that we’re going in the right direction.

“It’s just that this year’s car, for whatever reason or reasons, has been very underperforming and has fallen very short of our expectations for many different reasons that I’m not going to talk about again here today.

“Clearly, my timings have changed. I need to readapt my thinking into portraying myself now in three to four years’ time and take a decision, but I’m still confident in the path and the project that we are in.”

Williams is expected to bring an upgrade package to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after the summer break, as it works to develop an understanding of its data and processes to ensure the fundamental issues of this year’s car don’t carry over into the 2027 machine.

For Sainz, he believes Williams does have that understanding, but may lag behind the likes of the Aston Martin team – which has state-of-the-art facilities across the board at a brand-new factory at Silverstone – when it comes to introducing upgrades.

“The capacity to put together an upgrade like Aston has done in the middle of a year, I think we still need to see,” he said.

“I’m not so convinced. I think, as a team, we are slower in production. We are slower at manufacturing, and these kind of things obviously means that we take more time to to that, and also we need to find the downforce in the wind tunnel, which we seem to be finding some good things for next year and all that. But the gap is so big that I think we need to find another one.”

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