Williams driver Carlos Sainz is annoyed about missing out on points in Suzuka, but is confident that he will have a better chance in the upcoming races
Alexander Albon scored points for Williams for the third time in his third Grand Prix of 2025, but Carlos Sainz has now finished outside the points twice – and he puts that down mainly to his qualifying performance and the peculiarities of the Suzuka International Racing Course.
“The midfield is so close, and on a track where you have to be seven or eight tenths faster to overtake, it’s almost impossible to expect a race in which you can fight your way back through the field,” says Sainz. In this respect, Suzuka is like a second Monaco: “Overtaking is incredibly difficult and always costs you something.”
Nevertheless, he was able to try out a few things in the Williams FW47, emphasizes Sainz: “I felt more comfortable and the pace was there in the few laps in which I had a clear run. And now it’s just a matter of hopefully getting the weekends together better and gaining more experience.”
Why Williams still has “homework” to do
Sainz sees great potential for improvement in the set-up of his car, especially since qualifying revealed “a few weaknesses in the car”. “We really have to address these,” says Sainz. “We lose a lot of lap time at certain points on the track. This also matches my driving experience.”
Sainz does not go into detail, but the data analysis at F1 Tempo provides information about the current deficits at Williams: Compared to Max Verstappen in the Red Bull, Sainz is at a disadvantage especially in cornering and only on the straights at eye level or at most slightly faster. The bottom line is that Williams is at a significant disadvantage. Or as Sainz puts it: “We still have homework to do.”
Sainz would have liked an interruption-free training session on Suzuka Friday all the more. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t test much due to the red flags,” he explains. “And Bahrain will be difficult anyway: with training in the morning and qualifying at night. But we’re moving forward step by step.”
Why Sainz adapts his driving style
What it means: Sainz is trying to adapt more to the car and the car even better. “I have changed a few things in my driving style to compensate for certain weaknesses of the car, which are quite noticeable in qualifying when I push a little harder,” says Sainz.
“We’ll see whether I have more or fewer problems or am a bit more competitive at other tracks. But with the work on the set-up that we can still do and, of course, with every lap I drive in this car, I’m just getting faster and faster.” He is therefore ‘relatively optimistic’.
Sainz’s strategy at Suzuka
Sainz’s strategy in Suzuka was also optimistic: starting from 15th place on the grid, he drove a long first stint on mediums. “You hope for a safety car period,” he explains. But that didn’t happen.
Soft tires in the last stint at least gave Sainz the opportunity to “overtake a few cars.” But in the end, Sainz ran into trouble again because of the soft tires’ heavy degradation. “We had to struggle then,” says Sainz.
“But actually, on this track, it doesn’t matter what you do in terms of strategy. If you’re in P15, you’re racing against cars that are more or less equally fast, and you won’t overtake them.”
