Carlos Sainz has found himself a new home with Williams Racing and is about to embark on one of the most difficult challenges of his career.
Sainz was one of the standout free-agent drivers in the 2024 Formula 1 driver market which saw the Spaniard lose his seat at Ferrari before the season had even started.
After taking nearly six months to mull over his options, he decided that he wouldn’t wait for an opening at Mercedes and Red Bull, signing for a team with a bigger task on their hands.
Williams haven’t won a race for 13 years and have been a perennial backmarker for the majority of the sport’s turbo-hybrid era.
But Red Bull weren’t too keen on signing him to partner Max Verstappen from 2025, despite Sergio Perez’s dogged performance.
They missed out on the Constructors’ Championship due to the Mexican’s poor performances but refused to replace him with a known quality. They placed faith in their junior programme instead with Liam Lawson.
Helmut Marko was against signing Carlos Sainz for Red Bull over ‘deep’ issues
Sainz is adamant Red Bull did him a favour by overlooking him for a drive with them in 2025 and doesn’t believe he was the right driver to replace Perez.
The team were left with no choice but to replace the 35-year-old after he failed to finish inside the top five of a race in any of the last 19 rounds of the season.
Lawson comes with just 11 races of Formula 1 experience but did manage to annoy Fernando Alonso during that time with an aggressive approach to racing.
READ MORE: Red Bull won’t ‘publicly admit’ main reason for not replacing Sergio Perez with Carlos Sainz
The Race’s Scott Mitchell-Malm believes that Sainz’s past and the way he left Red Bull in 2017 left Helmut Marko unconvinced by any plot to sign him.
“I feel like Horner would’ve been a bit more open to bringing Sainz in, whereas Marko maybe more against it because he’s often putting the Verstappen camp at ease,” he said.
“I always got the impression Marko never quite let go of the fact Sainz fully wanted out of the Red Bull programme. Maybe that paints Marko in an unfairly petty light, but sometimes that stuff can run quite deep.”
What else made Red Bull decide against signing Carlos Sainz for 2025?
Sainz told Red Bull any decision made on past relationships would be wrong (in reference to frosty relations with Verstappen), considering that he has gelled well with Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris in recent times.
It’s significant that he has been involved in the turnaround of two midfield teams, who are now competing for the Constructors’ Championship. His work ethic is impressive.
Martin Brundle blamed behind-the-scenes issues on Sainz missing a Red Bull drive, suggesting that it was his prior friction with Verstappen that prevented him from getting the seat.
READ MORE: Carlos Sainz told why he will never be Max Verstappen’s teammate at Red Bull
Now he must turn his attention to what is a long-term project with Williams which may see him succumb to the midfield for a while.
It’s up to himself and new teammate Alex Albon to lead their development charge and take the team back to the sharp end of the grid, where they haven’t been for over 20 years.
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