Sainz reflects on process of adapting to Williams

Carlos Sainz has given an insight into how he is finding the process of adapting to Williams following mixed fortunes during his first three races with the team, with the Spaniard admitting that driving with a new power unit has been the “biggest change” he has had to contend with.

After catching the eye during pre-season testing by setting the pace on the second day of action, Sainz is yet to match this since the campaign has got underway, having recorded a DNF, a P10 and a P14 across the opening three rounds in Australia, China and Japan respectively.

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When it was put to him that fans have not yet seen the best of Sainz in a Williams ahead of this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix, the 30-year-old admitted that getting comfortable with the FW47 will still take some time.

“If you expect to see the best of Carlos Sainz at Williams in the third race in a new car, then you don’t understand the sport very well or you [don’t] know how long it might take for a driver to actually get fully up to speed with the car and fully understand where the last tenth-and-a-half or two-tenths of each car lies,” Sainz explained.

SUZUKA, JAPAN - APRIL 05: Carlos Sainz of Spain driving the (55) Williams FW47 Mercedes on track — Sainz is still in the process of adapting to the FW47

“Looking back at the first three races, I think I still haven’t yet put a full weekend together. The speed has been there in Australia and Suzuka; in China I had a bit of an off weekend for many different reasons, but to be honest in Australia and Suzuka I think I was pretty quick, especially given that I’m still new to the car.

“To manage to be close or in the same tenth as Alex [Albon] all the way through Quali I think is a good start, a good point to start the season.

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“I just need to make sure now we start doing less mistakes when it comes to executing the weekend and keep improving my speed, because obviously the speed we can still improve a little bit. We are not as far as it seems – we just need to put a full weekend together and it will come.”

Pushed on how useful it is to now return to the Bahrain International Circuit – where he gained his initial experience with the car in pre-season testing – Sainz answered: “Very useful, because especially here in testing I felt very comfortable with the car.

BAHRAIN, BAHRAIN - APRIL 10: Carlos Sainz of Spain and Williams looks on in the Paddock during — Sainz is hopeful that returning to Bahrain – where he felt "very comfortable" with the Williams car during pre-season testing – will prove useful this weekend

“Given that I was not as happy in China, I looked back to the test and the set-up that we were running here, and I was keen together with the team to try to put the car somewhere closer to the way it felt in the Bahrain test, because there I felt like I was up to speed, driving fairly natural and I didn’t have to think so much about driving, while in China I remember and even Suzuka I’ve been having to really break my head to understand how to drive the car and to extract all the performance from it.

“You first need to go through these weekends where you have a bit more of a challenging time to understand that and reverse engineer that. That takes time – there’s 24 races, we’ve only done three and obviously everyone expected me to be straight up in the pace, which is a good thing.

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“It means that people value me and expect high things of me, but I was the first one that – after the Bahrain test when I was P1 – was like, ‘I’m nowhere near where I need to be still with this car to perform at the level that I want to perform’.

“I was the first one calming down expectations and knowing that the first quarter of the year was going to be tough, especially with a guy like Alex pushing hard and doing such a good job. It always takes a bit of time to get to that level, so I’m calm, I’m down to my work and doing my things and it will come.”

SUZUKA, JAPAN - APRIL 06: Carlos Sainz of Spain driving the (55) Williams FW47 Mercedes leads — Sainz has praised the performance of team mate Albon across the opening rounds of the championship

Sainz went on to speak of the “muscle memory” that he has been left with from driving the Ferrari for four years between 2021 and 2024 – something that he suggested brings with it both benefits and downsides – but the four-time race winner believes that racing with a Mercedes power unit for the first time in his career has posed the greatest challenge.

“The Mercedes PU is probably the biggest change in changing teams that I have had to adapt [to],” Sainz conceded. “While there is obviously aerodynamics and suspension, you go through [that and] everything feels completely different, but when they change the engine that’s when you really feel some big differences, and I do feel very big differences compared to Ferrari.

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“There’s also things in the way the team operates with upshifts, downshifts and the way they do [things] to make the power unit work that, as you can see in Australia, caught me out. But at the same time, you need to go through that experience to understand this happens only in the Mercedes PU and not in a Ferrari.

“It’s interesting because it’s quite a big change, and it’s incredible how different two power units can be but how close in performance they can be at the same time. [I’ve been] trying to give the team at Mercedes good feedback on what Ferrari was doing better, at the same time trying to give feedback on what I think they’re doing better than Ferrari, so we are all trying to improve.”