Carlos Sainz acknowledged that, despite the progress shown by Williams at the Miami Grand Prix, Alpine is still far ahead but he has not lost hope of achieving a great “comeback”.
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The Williams team has started a chase with its rival Alpine to regain the position of “best of the rest” in the constructors’ standings, currently held by the French team in fifth place.
Sainz spoke about this in Miami: “We finally installed on the car the upgrades that were supposed to arrive from the first race, due to all the delays we suffered at the start of the season.”
Fundamental work that is starting to pay off
“Now that they are on the car, it is at least at the level of the mid-field teams. We still know that we have a lot of extra weight and settings to improve on the car, the Spaniard analyzes. When you look at that, it’s positive. I think the team has made a huge effort in recent weeks to bring these upgrades, and it shows that when you do things properly, results start to follow.”
“Clearly, this weekend, we were in my opinion the sixth fastest car, but Alpine still finished 20 seconds ahead of us, he notes. Without the safety car, the gap would probably have been 25 to 30 seconds. So there is still a big gap with Alpine, and regarding the gap with the leading teams, I wouldn’t even be able to quantify it.”
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Sainz nevertheless expressed satisfaction with the progress made since the start of the season, while emphasizing that there is still a lot of work to do: “On a personal level, yes, obviously. At Suzuka, I was 15th ahead of Franco, and in China I finished 9th, but we were still very far from the mid-field level.”
A better race pace
“Here, we were finally able to really fight. We regularly beat the mid-field. Alpine may be in a no man’s land, but it clearly remains ahead of us in this no man’s land, Sainz points out. But at least, we managed to beat Haas, Racing Bulls and Audi on pure pace, and deservedly. There is one more race, we were half a second behind in race pace, so we have definitely taken an important step.”
The Spanish driver however warned that the full recovery of Williams will still take time: “It will take a few more months to complete this recovery,” he concludes. I think we will have to wait until the last third of the season to see a real turning point. But at least, the work on the upgrades is paying off, the car’s weight has decreased a bit, even if we know there is still work to be done.”
This expected progress will likely determine the extension of Sainz’s contract with the Grove team, with team principal James Vowles having confirmed he wants to keep him in 2027 to ensure continuity in the project’s development.
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