Williams ambassador Jenson Button has revealed that the team are in the process of “downloading” Carlos Sainz’s knowledge and expertise from his stints at Ferrari and McLaren.

It comes just weeks after it emerged that Ferrari have gone to extreme lengths to ‘erase’ Lewis Hamilton’s memory of his time at Mercedes.

First Ferrari wipe Lewis Hamilton’s memory, now Williams ‘download’ Carlos Sainz

Sainz is preparing for his first season as a Williams driver, having signed a multi-year deal with the Grove-based team last summer.

The Spaniard’s move to Williams was announced six months after he was informed that his Ferrari contract would not be extended beyond 2024, with the Scuderia confirming the shock signing of Hamilton.

Sainz responded to the news by producing the most complete season of his career in 2024, claiming assured wins in Australia and Mexico.

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His victory in Melbourne, the scene of the opening race of the F1 2025 campaign next month, was particularly notable as it came just two weeks after he was ruled out of the previous race in Saudi Arabia with appendicitis.

Having been signed as four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel’s replacement in 2021 following a successful spell with McLaren across 2019/20, Sainz ended his stint at Ferrari with four wins and six pole positions to his name.

With Ferrari agreeing to release Sainz early from his contract in a gesture of goodwill, the 30-year-old got his first taste of Williams machinery in the 2024 post-season test in Abu Dhabi in December.

Sainz completed his first laps behind the wheel of the team’s F1 2025 car, the FW47, in a shakedown at Silverstone earlier this month, with an official three-day pre-season test set to commence in Bahrain on Wednesday.

With the capture of Sainz considered a major coup for Williams, Button has revealed that the team have extracted as much information as possible from their new signing.

Appearing on the Fast and Curious podcast, the 2009 World Champion said: “It’s a great line-up [of Sainz and Alex Albon].

“And from what Carlos and the team have said, they’ve just been ‘downloading’ him over the last few months.

“They’ve been trying to take all of his experience working with McLaren, working with Ferrari over the last few years, because it’s always interesting to know how [other] teams went about their business.

“I think he got a bit of a shock coming to Silverstone in February to launch [the car].

“A lot less pasta in his belly probably than he’s used to as well.”

Despite swapping Ferrari, who fell just 14 points short of winning the Constructors’ Championship in 2024, for a Williams team who finished ninth last season, Sainz insisted that he remains hopeful of adding to his collection of four F1 victories.

And he claimed that it would be “the proudest moment” of his career if he could take Williams, whose only win over the last two decades came at the Spanish Grand Prix of 2012, back to the top step of the podium.

Sainz said: “I want to win.

“I am coming to Williams to try and help the process of recovery to the top of the field in as short a time as possible and I believe I can help in that. The challenge motivates me.

“If one day I can get on a podium or get a win with Williams, that moment will be for sure the proudest moment.”

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Reports from Italy last month claimed that Ferrari have been working to wipe Hamilton’s memory of his Mercedes career in a bid to accelerate his adaptation to his new team.

Hamilton spent 12 full seasons with Mercedes between 2013 and 2024, cementing his status as the most decorated driver in F1 history by securing a joint-record seven World Championships and more than 100 pole positions and race wins.

His move to Ferrari marks only the second team switch of Hamilton’s illustrious career with his only previous transfer occurring when he swapped McLaren for Mercedes at the end of 2012.

It is said that Ferrari have ‘deliberately’ tweaked settings in the simulator to ‘erase’ Hamilton’s ‘sensory memory’ of the functions and systems he became accustomed to at Mercedes.

Hamilton is believed to have had some trouble adapting to Ferrari’s braking system, with the Scuderia using materials provided by Brembo. Mercedes, meanwhile, are understood to use Carbon Industrie brakes.

Rumours after Hamilton’s Ferrari test debut last month claimed that the 40-year-old had requested changes to the pedals after a couple of notable mistakes.

A fix arrived in time for Ferrari’s second private test of the winter in Barcelona, where Hamilton crashed heavily on the second day of running in a setback to his pre-season preparations.

With no imagery of footage available of the incident, a number of theories ran riot that Hamilton’s crash may have been triggered by a bump on the track surface or his inexperience with the Ferrari engine.

Addressing his accident for the first time last week, however, Hamilton dropped a hint that he simply made a mistake as he started to explore “the limits” of the car.

Hamilton is thought to have made further requests to Ferrari after the team held a shakedown for the new SF-25 car at Fiorano last week, with ‘relatively minor’ changes coming ahead of the start of pre-season testing.

Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com following the launch of the SF-25, Hamilton opened up about the challenges of adapting to the Ferrari after his long stint at Mercedes.

He said: “It’s completely different. I thought it [would be just] another Formula 1 car.

“I thought it would be [like] when I went from McLaren to Mercedes – there were similarities, but I guess it was still powered by Mercedes, so the sound, the vibration, was all the same or was similar.

“Whilst there were slightly different characteristics of the car, this is a step with the whole thing being completely different.

“It’s a really exciting experience. This is something I’ve really enjoyed trying to wrap my mind around, particularly also just in settings and the terminology they use, the different ways that they can set up a car – that’s taken some getting used to, for sure.

“It’s rare that you just jump in and it just fits.

“For example, the steering wheel is completely different, everything, all these switches are completely different. The software is different, everything.

“Not only am I having to adapt to that, I am adapting to a car that’s made quite differently from what I’ve worked with in the past to achieve a similar sort of thing.

“The feeling is a lot different. I don’t feel that currently I’m having to change my driving style too much. I’m actually feeling quite comfortable in the car and just taking one step at a time.

“I hope, and we’ll see as we get further down the line at the real race circuits that we go into, just how much aligned and how much change I might need to do.

“But the key is to be open-minded and be dynamic. Luckily, with my experience, I should be able to do that.”

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