EXCLUSIVE: James Vowles would ‘destroy’ Carlos Sainz's Ferrari secrets

Williams became the second team to officially reveal their 2025 F1 car today.

The FW47 was driven by both Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon, with media and guests in attendance at the Silverstone event.

Crash.net spoke exclusively to team principal James Vowles between interview sessions to gather more information on Sainz’s feedback after his drive, whether it aligned with Albon’s analyses and what information Sainz could divulge to Williams from his experience with Ferrari.

“It's not just as simple as more downforce; it’s a balance characteristic, especially that he’s looking for, which we’ve already got on top of,” Vowles told Crash.net.

“The other bit that he was looking for out of the car - there’s small items like how to improve starts and how to improve feel within the car, how to improve his fit, functionally.”

Sainz arrives at the newly named ‘Atlassian Williams Racing’ as one of the most experienced and respected drivers on the F1 grid.

A tally of just four race wins does little justice to the reliability and consistent pace that he has demonstrated throughout an F1 career that has spanned Toro Rosso, Renault, McLaren, Ferrari, and now Williams.

The Williams boss elaborated further on Sainz’s feedback, noting: “He was happy with various aspects like braking stability, but it really was balance, especially in high speed [corners] which is for us to work on, the good news - is we’re in that direction of travel. And then how the car feels, the certain sequences of tyres getting older and older.”

General drivability issues and sensitivity to wind were common among Albon, Logan Sargeant, and Franco Colapino’s post-race interviews last year, but the team’s best moments demonstrated that when their car is in its ideal operating window, it is able to battle with the midfield. To widen that window is the challenge.

Finally, and perhaps most intriguingly, when queried on the value of Sainz’s latent Ferrari technical knowledge and its potential value to the CTO Pat Fry and the design department at the Grove-based team, Vowles was adamant that any solutions to the car’s issues must be internally solved.

Vowles stated that “Even if he [Sainz] turned up with anything, I would only throw it out and destroy it. Everything has to be internal - and it is!”

The FW47 will hit the track in anger for the first time in official pre-season testing in Bahrain on February 26-28 before making its race debut at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on March 16.