Carlos Sainz acknowledged that Williams starts the 2026 Formula 1 season at a disadvantage, and still shows flaws in areas considered fundamental for building a competitive car.
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After a 2025 above expectations, when the Grove team finished the constructors’ championship in fifth position with 137 points, the new technical cycle of regulations brought difficulties. The Spaniard, who achieved two podiums and a top 3 in a Sprint race last season, described the pre-season as ‘a very difficult period’ for the team.
In an interview with Mundo Deportivo, Sainz considered that it is still too early to establish a clear hierarchy: “We do the same calculations, but with a bit more information, and we have an approximation of where we are, but the reality is that until we are with the cars with full tanks in Australia and everyone pushes the engine to the limit, we won’t really know where we are,” he said.
The Spanish driver was direct when comparing the current moment with last year: “Being realistic, and I always like to be realistic in that sense, we are not where we were last year.”
Williams was unable to participate in the collective shakedown in Barcelona at the end of January, due to delays and weight issues with its car, but managed to recover some of the time during the official pre-season tests in Bahrain, completing 748 laps over six days. Still, rumors indicate that the FW48 is above the minimum regulatory weight of 768 kg.
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Even with this scenario, Sainz maintains confidence in the ability to react: “The car is very new, it’s still green, and we are going to improve it in every aspect. As everyone saw, it was a very difficult start to the year for the team, but that doesn’t mean the first race will set the tone for the entire season,” he stated.
He believes that development will be decisive throughout the championship: “It’s going to be a season where we will evolve the car a lot, both the car itself and the engines, and we’ll see what level we’re at by the end of the year. We would like to be at least where we finished last year, or even better.”
Analyzing the impact of the new regulations, Sainz highlighted that technical changes usually benefit more consolidated structures: “I think the whole F1 world expected that the change in regulations could help teams that were not yet at the level of the top ones to get closer, but historically, the teams that are already well-structured take advantage of these changes to take a big step forward,” he added.
According to the Spaniard, Williams still needs to correct important points on the car: “Teams that are still a bit less developed end up making mistakes, silly things, which are what make you learn as a team what is still missing to be a top team, and that’s where we are. This year we realized that we still fail in two or three things that are fundamental to producing a high-level Formula 1 car. We learned from this in the pre-season and we will apply it going forward,” he completed.
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