Carlos Sainz admits Williams reality after crash: “Need to give yourself a margin”

Carlos Sainz has reflected on his crash in the wet conditions of the Australian Grand Prix that began the 2025 Formula 1 season. Providing insight into the data analysis and his feelings following the incident, the Spaniard is hoping to confront this steep learning curve as he embeds himself into Williams.

The Grand Prix began with challenging conditions as the drivers battled with a wet and greasy street circuit. The rain claimed several victims, with the new Williams driver being one of them. Sainz was among three drivers who failed to complete the opening lap, with the driver losing control of his FW47 on the final turn under the safety car. 

“Yeah, well, as you could see, I was disappointed after the race, but very quickly as soon as I opened the laptop and I went a bit through what happened, I think concluded very quickly what was going on, what happened at the time,” Sainz explained ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix. 

“For me, the general feeling about it is, it just shows how quickly a good weekend can turn out to be a bad one in this sport. When the last 1-5% things that you don’t know about a Formula 1 car that you’re driving in 99% of the cases, they’re not gonna cut you out or cut you up. But when things and stars align, and there you find yourself in a situation like I found myself in behind that safety car in Australia, it just shows that yes, it’s this attention to detail and attention to the small stuff that can sometimes bite you. So yeah, a lot to learn from it and we’re gonna put a plan to improve it.”

The former Ferrari driver was caught out by what he described as a “big torque kick” on an upshift which spun the car. After leaving the Scuderia, the driver is having to adapt to the Mercedes powertrain that powers his Grove machinery, a powertrain that is considerably different to what he’s used to at the Italian team. In conversation with the media, including Motorsport.com, he was asked about the differences and how he’s adapting with only pre-season testing properly under his belt.

“Yeah, but at the same time, you cannot be too hard on yourself because it just takes time, and it takes examples like this in order to learn from this kind of situation and how am I going to test that situation in Bahrain.

“You’re never gonna be on a wet track with cold intermediate tyres in safety car mode. How are you going to put yourself in this kind of situation in Bahrain and learn from this and say, ‘hey, there’s something here that I don’t quite like with the upshifts and it could catch me out in Australia,’ and in this case it’s exactly what happened.

“But how could I have prevented that in reality when you look back on it? There’s very little you can do to actually experience these things and you just need to give yourself a margin of races, you know, where you’re gonna go through this very steep learning curve and these kinds of things can happen where, yeah, you can be sure that you’re gonna learn a lot and give yourself a bit of margin and not to be maybe so tough on yourself because you’re gonna go through a big learning process.”

Sainz will be excited for a dry race weekend in Shanghai. But it still comes with its challenges. Being a sprint weekend, the driver will only have one practice session to accustom himself to the car in these conditions. It will be anything but easy.