{"id":130284,"date":"2025-09-11T16:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T16:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/130284\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T16:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T16:18:08","slug":"exclusive-the-peculiar-f1-weaknesses-that-carlos-sainz-is-helping-williams-to-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/130284\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: The ‘peculiar’ F1 weaknesses that Carlos Sainz is helping Williams to address"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carlos Sainz<\/a> has revealed Williams is undergoing a thorough process to ensure\u00a0the \u201cextreme\u201d and \u201cpeculiar\u201d weaknesses that have long plagued the team aren\u2019t prevalent in the car that it debuts under Formula 1<\/a>\u2019s new 2026 rules.<\/p>\n

Sainz\u2019s arrival has coincided with Williams revelling in an upturn in fortunes that has seen the team accumulate more points with eight rounds remaining in 2025 than it had during the past seven campaigns combined.<\/p>\n

However, Sainz has seldom been able to capitalise on the Grove-based squad\u2019s renewed competitiveness as incidents, botched strategies and technical gremlins have all conspired to limit him to just 16 points, 54 less than team-mate Alex Albon.<\/p>\n

But while the points gap between the duo is among the largest on the grid, the head-to-head over one lap standing at eight apiece shows that Sainz hasn\u2019t lost his raw speed.<\/p>\n

That being said, two-thirds into his maiden campaign with Williams, Sainz has admitted that he is still not at one with the FW47 due to certain restrictions with the car that he has been unable to overcome through his own driving or alternative set-up directions.<\/p>\n

When asked what he considers the most important thing to achieve over the closing rounds, Sainz told\u00a0Motorsport Week\u00a0in an exclusive interview: \u201cExecuting weekends. I know I have the speed with the car. I don\u2019t feel particularly at home with it. The car has some weaknesses that I cannot drive around them or I cannot tune a set-up to get rid of those weaknesses. And you need to drive the car in a very particular\u00a0way to do a maximum lap, the best possible lap time and it doesn\u2019t\u00a0particularly suit my driving style in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Providing his luck does turn around, though, Sainz has no doubt that he can contribute the essential points to ensure Williams holds fifth position in the Constructors\u2019 standings.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I know that even with those weaknesses I can be quick,\u201d he continued. \u201cI\u2019ve been quick from the get-go in Bahrain. I adapt and I can be quick. Not to the levels of maybe doing something magic with the car because I\u2019m lacking still a bit of feeling and experience with the car, but quick enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo my target is just to make sure that when we are quick enough or quick like we\u2019ve been in Miami, in Imola \u2013 the weekends where we had good chances to get good points \u2013 we get the good points and the top five, top sixes that we got at the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CarlosCarlos Sainz opened up on his experiences at Williams in an exclusive interview<\/p>\n

What Williams is lacking compared to the top F1 teams<\/p>\n

The remarkable improvement that Williams produced over the winter put the team in condition to even rival Ferrari at certain races earlier in the season, with Sainz and Albon both lining up inside the top seven at the Miami and Emilia Romagna Grands Prix. However, there have still been the occasional weekends when either driver has been susceptible to a premature Q1 elimination.<\/p>\n

Sainz has attributed such fluctuations in performance weekend-to-weekend to limitations that have remained embedded in the team\u2019s cars since this rules cycle began. And with Williams endeavouring to utilise the impending overhaul to narrow the gap to the leading quartet, Sainz has acknowledged how imperative it is that the side establishes where the long-standing hindrances stem from as it assembles the FW47\u2019s successor.<\/p>\n

Put to him that next season\u2019s reset is a chance to start with a clean slate, Sainz countered: \u201cWell, first, we are in the process of identifying why this car has those weaknesses. Where is it on the aero map? Where is it on the suspensions, the settings?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is out of these things or in the tools of the car, where is the hidden thing that is making the car have such peculiar weaknesses that are so extreme to the point where in Hungary you are almost a second off pole position from a Ferrari, but then in Miami and Imola we were, if anything, quicker than them?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it must be something very big that we are not understanding and capturing and, while we are designing next year\u2019s car, we are trying to understand what\u2019s wrong with this car and its predecessors, because the \u201822, \u201823, \u201824 car also had it. What\u2019s been intrinsic of a Williams car that always gives this relative weakness to the competition?\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE \u2013 Why Carlos Sainz\u2019s debut F1 year with Williams has been \u2018everything but good so far\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Sainz has revealed Williams is undergoing a thorough process to ensure\u00a0the \u201cextreme\u201d and \u201cpeculiar\u201d weaknesses that have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,31788,101,56,54,55,2922],"class_list":["post-130284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sainz","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}