Carlos Sainz’s Australian Grand Prix came to a premature end before the Spaniard was able to turn a single lap in anger, which has made the transition to a sprint weekend in China a little more difficult.

After moving from Ferrari to Williams for the F1 2025 season, Sainz has admitted that the transition has been challenging, and that he’s “not feeling at home” in his new team just yet.

Carlos Sainz still ‘not feeling at home’ at Williams

Despite looking quick in pre-season testing and during the Australian Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz is finding the Chinese GP weekend to be a much different story.

It’s the first sprint weekend of the year, which means practice only lasts an hour before the critical track sessions kick off in anger — and so far, it’s been a challenge.

In practice, Sainz could only manage a time good enough for a 15th-place classification, while new teammate Alex Albon impressed up in seventh.

Then, in sprint quali, Albon again snuck into the top 10 with a ninth-place starting position. Sainz, meanwhile, was knocked out in SQ2 and will line up in 13th. It’s not a disaster by any means, but the Spaniard admitted that much would need to be done before he truly felt one with the car.

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“I’ve struggled all day with the balance, and both sessions have been quite tough,” Sainz said in the official Formula 1 post-quali debrief.

“In sprint quali we had a few issues, including a weird feeling with the seat that we’ll look into, but overall it comes down to me still not feeling at home in the car.”

Sainz is referring to the fact that his seat seemed to rattle loose while he was in the car, which certainly distracted him from qualifying.

He continued, “We were struggling with some balance problems and especially coming down to Q2, not knowing exactly where to find the lap time, and a bit of overdriving.

“I still have to learn and understand many things about it, and I know, with more mileage, it will come. Hopefully tomorrow we can put everything together and improve today’s result for Sunday.

“It’s been a difficult weekend up until now, we’re trying to find the balance of the car, it feels quite different here with the wind and, as I said, I’m struggling to find lap time when it comes to qualifying.”

Alex Albon, too, admitted that there is still “work to do” despite his own promising qualifying position.

Thankfully, Sainz does sound like there’s still plenty to be positive about, even if his session was challenging. His 13th-place sprint start still sees him starting ahead of Sauber, Racing Bulls, Alpine, a Haas, and even a Red Bull.

Learning how to feel at home with a new team, though, will only take time.

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