James Vowles has leapt to the defence of Carlos Sainz after the driver made a slow start to life at Williams.

Sainz has scored just one point, with the help of two disqualifications, so far this season and has not made the quick start that many would have expected.

James Vowles defends Carlos Sainz after slow Williams start

To make matters worse for Sainz, Alex Albon has found plenty of performance in the car, starting the year with 18 points heading into the Bahrain Grand Prix.

But despite the lopsided nature of Williams’ points so far, Vowles believes the team is getting “more than I paid for” from their new driver.

“I think we’re getting more than I paid for,” he told F1 TV in Bahrain. “And I think the reason why I say that is because there’s two different ways to assess performance.

“Number one is obviously what you see in the car driving around, and in that regard, he’s making steps forward. I’m very comfortable that he will be on the pace shortly, but it takes time to acclimatise. We are quite a different car to the Ferrari.

“But the second element where I’ve been very impressed with what he’s doing with working with our aerodynamics team, with our race engineering team, pretty much everyone throughout our organization, finding those last milliseconds.

“That’s the reason why I wanted him as part of this team and he’s delivering absolutely above my expectations.”

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Sainz’s difficulties are not helped by the close nature of the pack with just a few tenths separating a number of teams but Vowles insisted he does not pay too much attention to that.

“I use relative gaps, as does he,” the team principal said. “Yes, the difference now is when you’re a tenth off, there’s four cars that shuffle in between the two.

“But it’s a relative numbers game. Between him and Alex, I don’t think there’ll be a millisecond to spare when both are on song. That’s what he’s reviewing. That’s what I’m reviewing as well.”

Sainz has typically been a slow starter when joining a new team and in all but three races of his opening trio of races at a new team, the former Ferrari driver finished behind his new team-mate.

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