Carlos Sainz Jr. feels that Williams may have unintentionally made itself slow by implementing some audacious set-up changes in practice.

The team will aim to revert back to its previous set-up in hopes of finding top-10 pace ahead of qualifying.

Williams makes step back in audacious set-up swap

Williams brought a slew of new upgrades for its FW47 at the Belgian Grand Prix in hopes of giving themselves one last push through the remainder of the F1 2025 season before turning their focus to the new regulations in 2026.

While both Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon seemed comfortable with their machinery in FP1, however, things changed for FP2.

In FP1, Albon and Sainz set the 11th- and 15th-quickest times, respectively, but both men saw that performance fade coming into FP2. There, it was Sainz leading the Williams duo in 16th, while Alex Albon finished in 18th.

While both drivers have concerns, Sainz admitted that Williams may have “made ourselves slow” looking for pace.

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“We had little issues here and there, but ultimately we don’t seem to have the performance that we want to have this weekend,” Sainz told media after the conclusion of FP2.

“I expect to do some changes overnight to see if we can find some lap time because we are, at the moment, a bit kind of two-, three-tenths too slow to get into a top 10.”

While the team does aim to improve, Sainz admitted that it “expected” to struggle in Hungary, and that the situation wasn’t helped by the team “changing a lot the car around the whole day to try and see if we could find something in the performance.”

That performance, he says,”doesn’t seem to be coming.”

The plan, then, is to “revert back on some of the things that we’ve done during the day, to try and make ourselves quicker, having the feeling that we might have made ourselves slow.”

But when it comes to Alex Albon, the British driver says he’s not “overly worried” about performance this weekend.

“FP1 pace was actually really strong,” he explained.

“We we never did a second push, but we were looking kind of like top-five pace in FP1 on a track that normally doesn’t suit us. And we’ve done some stuff to the car that actually feels good this weekend, set-up wise.

“In FP2, Carlos and I, we kind of went — we wanted the same things with the car, and we went maybe in the wrong direction together.

“From that point in FP2, it just felt wrong, and we need to revert back in to what we had in FP1, maybe tickle it a little bit on that side and take it from a different place.

“So, yeah, it’s okay. It’s not the end of the world.”

That’s because Albon says Williams was completely aware that Hungary would be a challenge — but within that challenge is opportunity.

“It actually allows us a bit of opportunity to explore the setup,” he said.

“That’s why we’re changing it, because we know most probably if we play it too safe, we’re not going to score points this weekend, so we just need to throw some things at it.

“We have some some good ideas now. I think we’ve kind of explored everything we need to and we can, we can pick and choose what we want.”

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