Carlos Sainz blasts critics who “don't understand the sport very well”

New Williams recruit Carlos Sainz says he is not in a “bad place” at the start of the 2025 Formula 1 season, citing his qualifying speed compared to teammate Alex Albon.

Sainz has found the going tough in the midfield after spending the last four years with the front-running Ferrari team, as he continues to find his feet in the Williams FW47.

While Alex Albon has enjoyed an incredible run of form in the opening three races of the season to equal Williams’ entire points tally from 2024, Sainz has been able to break inside the top 10 just once so far - and only after three drivers ahead of him were disqualified in China.

But the four-time grand prix winner has also shown flashes of pace, lapping just 0.053s slower than Albon in the second part of qualifying at Suzuka in his competitive qualifying showing of 2025.

This is why Sainz thinks there is scope for better results at Williams, especially if he can cut down on errors and put together a clean weekend.

“Given how new everything is, for me to be in the same tenth in quali as a guy like Alex in Australia and at a confidence track like Suzuka, I'm not in a bad place,” he said.

“ I just need to make sure I put the whole weekend together, with the penalties, with finding the lap time exactly in Q2—because now Q2 for us is the lap of your life, with the field within two tenths in Q2.

“So if you don't put the lap in that moment of Q2, your weekend is over because you start 12th instead of P9. You cannot overtake in Suzuka and you cannot overtake in the midfield. So it's the very small details that need to come together.”

Carlos Sainz blasts critics of his Williams form

F1 ran a single three-day pre-season test in Bahrain in February, meaning each driver got just one-and-a-half days to adapt to their 2025 cars ahead of the start of the campaign in Australia.

Sainz said it’s naive to think he will have a full understanding of the FW47 after just three race weekends, but insisted he is “not as far" as the results might suggest.

“Well, if you expect to see the best of Carlos Sainz in a Williams in the third race and in a new car, then yeah, you don't understand the sport very well, or you know at least how long it might take for a driver to actually get fully up to speed with the car and to fully understand where the last tenth and a half or last two tenths of each car lies,” he remarked.

“To manage to be close or in the same tenth as Alex all the way through quali, I think it's a good start to the season. I just need to make sure now we start doing less mistakes when it comes to executing the weekend and keep improving my speed because obviously, I believe the speed still—we can improve it a little bit. But yeah, we are not as far as it seems.”

The Mercedes-powered Williams is a fundamentally different car from the Ferrari in which he finished fifth in the championship last year after two wins and nine podiums.

Sainz explained that he has to get rid of some of the habits he developed at Ferrari in order to extract the maximum out of his 2025 package.

“Obviously, Ferrari had certain car balance, a certain direction that we followed after three or four years of developing that car that required you to brake in a certain manner, turn in a certain manner, release the brake in a certain place—which you fall into a trap of after three years of muscle memory of doing everything that way,” he said.

“And when you jump into a different car, and especially under pressure in quali, you try and find the last two tenths of the car. You fall into your muscle memory because that’s the muscle memory that you have from three years.

“It's not that you need to unlearn them, because those traits are actually making me very quick also in other types of corners. But you need to remember, in a certain type of corner, to not do it.”