Carlos Sainz hints at imminent Williams future decision

Carlos Sainz has indicated that a decision on his Williams Formula 1 future will be taken in the coming days. 

Sainz could be a key mover on the F1 driver transfer market, with the Spaniard increasingly linked with a switch to Audi. 

The summer shutdown is often the time when driver contracts are sorted for the following season, and with Madrid making its debut shortly after the break, there is an ideal window for an announcement to be made.

Asked when his future will be confirmed, Sainz said: "I honestly don’t know. I cannot give you a date, but I imagine, as I always said, that I was going to wait until the summer to sit down with my team and think about this, and discuss with them, with James and everyone, the future of the team and my future in it. 

"I expect that during the summer we will start to take a decision and start to see a bit more of the situation, but the exact timing, I don’t know."

When Sainz joined Williams from Ferrari ahead of the 2025 season, the team sold him on a vision of fighting for wins in the approaching new era of F1. Despite scoring unexpected podiums in Azerbaijan and Qatar last term, results have been hard to come by this year, with Williams the only team to miss the pre-season shakedown in Spain, and then failing to bring its planned 'round one' package until the fourth weekend in Miami.

To date, Sazin has a best finish of ninth place - achieved three times in China, Miami and Canada, although he has failed to score a point at the six events since. 

"I think there’s no secret that my expectations, or let’s say my timeline for how long it would take me to win a race again and for Williams to be the place to do that, have been delayed by a year or two," he added. 

"It depends on how quickly we manage to bounce back from this situation. Obviously, I had in my mind a timeframe that I was willing to accept in order to help this team get back into a winning position, and how long I was willing to wait to be fighting for wins again. Clearly, that timeline, unfortunately for all of us, because obviously the team is also affected by it, is going to be longer than we expected, and that path is going to be longer than expected. 

"Having said that, I see what the team is investing in the future. I still see the vision of the team being pretty clear. I see how much is going on behind the scenes when you leave the current car performance aside, and this still gives me confidence and motivation that we’re going in the right direction. 

"It’s just that this year’s car, for whatever reason or reasons, has been very underperforming and has fallen very short of our expectations for many different reasons that I’m not going to talk about again here today. 

"Clearly, my timings have changed. I need to readapt my thinking into portraying myself now in three to four years’ time and take a decision, but I’m still confident in the path and the project that we are in."