EXCLUSIVE: Williams reveal criteria which led them to Carlos Sainz

James Vowles exclusively told us the criteria he was seeking in a new driver, days before confirming Carlos Sainz for Williams.

Outgoing Ferrari driver Sainz has penned a multi-year deal with Williams, who have won a significant chase for his signature which included Sauber and Alpine.

Sainz will partner Alex Albon in an exciting-looking duo for Williams in 2025.

Before the major news was confirmed, Vowels told us what attributes he was looking for in a driver market which included Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou.

“First and foremost, I need two drivers pushing each other to the limit,” Vowles exclusively told Crash.net last week at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

“It’s not one leading the way and the other one following the way. It is two drivers that are really finding the limits, which means you double the amount of learning, double the amount of set-up work.

"It needs to be an individual who believes in what Williams is and what the direction of travel of Williams is. It’s really important to me that they are seeking every millisecond of performance.

“Your drivers are your leaders of this organisation as well. 10 words can be more powerful than me talking for an hour. They have to be aligned with what we’re doing and have that responsibility.

“Performance just goes hand in hand with that. But the third and fourth [parts] is that they should be therefore developing the product. It’s not just about using it and complaining about it. It’s ‘I want this to be better, what can I do to help?’ That’s what I’m looking for.”

While outright performance is always a crucial barometer when choosing a driver, Vowles explained that character and behaviour were also important factors.

“Everything I do is pretty much data-driven in some form or another,” he said. “You put statistics to most things. How they perform in qualifying, how they are in the race, how good are they at defending, how good are they at attacking.

“How do they react when things go wrong, externally. Is it positive, is it negative? Do they back the team or push the team away? Do I see that that team has traditionally moved forward when they’ve been there, or moved backwards, as a result of them.

“You could say there’s many things going into that, and one of them is definitely the driver along that route as well at the same time. How are they as a character? When it gets tough, do they want more? Or do they shy away from it fundamentally.

“Are they individuals that I could call at 11pm and talk about how we are going to make this better. Or are they individuals that just go into their own silo afterwards. How are they as a character? It’s not one thing, it’s a combination of all of those.”

Using Williams’ young driver programme as an “extreme example” of the selection process - as Vowles himself put it - he added: “50 percent of it is performance. 50 percent of it is behaviours and performance under pressure.

“I would much rather take an individual that was sitting third in the championship - in the junior categories to be clear - but really good at performing under pressure, than someone who is first but struggles when the performance really ramps up.

"Because the performance under pressure once you get to Formula 1 becomes more and more significant."

Williams have now completed the major coup of attracting Sainz to their F1 team.