Carlos Sainz heads into the Japanese Grand Prix still trying to get his new life with Williams going after scoring one point over the first two rounds, and not on merit.
The 30-year-old recorded his first point of the campaign last time out in Shanghai. Yet Sainz only adopted P10 as his former team Ferrari recorded their first-ever double disqualification at the Chinese Grand Prix and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly was also removed from the classification.
Sainz had only taken the chequered flag in P13 and 15.084 seconds away from the points on his second outing for Williams. The Spaniard would even rue his puzzling performance swing after the event having been unable to match teammate Alex Albon, who was 20.066s ahead.
Carlos Sainz must ‘reverse-engineer’ his corning approach to suit Williams’ 2025 F1 car
Sainz felt comfortable with Williams’ car straight away after leaving Ferrari at the end of last season. Yet the pace he found in the 2024 post-season and 2025 pre-season tests vanished to qualify in P10 (0.325s slower than Albon) in Australia and P15 (0.245s off Albon) in China.
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The Spaniard was predicted to put Albon under immense pressure upon arriving in Grove as a four-time Grand Prix winner and a six-time F1 pole sitter. Yet Guenther Steiner feels Sainz’s struggles with Williams are going unnoticed with his qualifying woes particularly perplexing.
Sainz believes he now knows one key cause for his struggles to adapt to Williams’ car after a brief break in the 2025 Formula 1 calendar. The Madrid native has found Williams’ car to be a ‘completely different’ beast to his old Ferraris, and he must re-learn how to tackle corners.
“The current car has completely different strengths and weaknesses than the car I drove for three years and adapted to,” Sainz said in Thursday’s press conference at the Japanese GP.
“That’s basically the point. You approach a corner a certain way – expecting the car to do something specific – and then you have to completely reverse-engineer and say, ‘OK, start from scratch. That’s not how it works here’.”
Suzuka will punish Carlos Sainz if the Williams driver’s cornering problems persist in Japan
Sainz lost a lot of speed on the exit of corners at the Chinese GP last time out as he tried to attack the entry points aggressively like the Spaniard enjoyed at Ferrari but would not reap the same rewards in Williams’ car. Any repeat this weekend will be devastating for his race.
Suzuka will punish Sainz if he cannot master its fast, sweeping Esses sequence to start a lap, the Degner curves, Spoon Curve and 130R. Those corners will only amplify the problems he endured at the Shanghai International Circuit and likely see Sainz chasing Albon’s tail again.
Williams team principal James Vowles will also not want to see Sainz struggling again at the Japanese GP after outlining the challenge that the Grove squad face in the F1 constructors’ championship. While Williams are fourth with 17 points, the midfield is proving very tight.
“You can see actually in the points table, whilst we’ve done well, Haas have a good number of points, Aston [Martin] have a good number of points and we’ve been out-qualified or at least had VCARB near us at both of these events,” Vowles noted following the Chinese GP.
“It [matching Williams’ 2024 points total] is a stark reminder that we need absolutely every millisecond available to us to be competing ahead of that incredibly difficult midfield battle.”
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