Carlos Sainz details secret Williams plan which unlocked Qatar podium

Carlos Sainz has given an in-depth explanation of how Williams' Qatar Grand Prix podium was months in the making following his third place finish.

Sainz banked his second podium of the season for Williams, in a grand prix, in Lusail, finishing third after being promoted following the late second stop of Lando Norris, who dropped to fifth behind his former team-mate and Kimi Antonelli.

Sainz was able to fend off Antonelli and then Norris in the closing stages to become the first Williams driver with more than one podium in a season since Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas in 2015 - with the result securing Williams fifth place in the constructors' championship.

It is the team's highest finish in a season since fifth in 2017, with the current points haul of Sainz and Alex Albon totalling 137 with one race remaining, the highest return since 138 in 2016. 

Reflecting on the surprise podium, Sainz revealed how Williams had been working on a solution for Qatar since a poor Hungarian GP in July, where it scored a 14-15 finish, its worst-two car finish of the season. 

"I think it's obviously mainly due to the hard work everyone's done trying to prepare for this race after the very difficult weekend we had in Budapest," Sainz explained to media, including RacingNews365. 

"Which are these long, medium-speed combined corners that we always seem to be very, very weak. We put together a plan with the team to try some different things in the simulator and in the factory to try and switch on the car for these kinds of tracks. 

"Already in the simulator, it felt ok, but you never really trust the simulator fully. You say: 'No, it cannot be this good,' and suddenly from the first lap of FP1, I think I was trading P1s, P2s, and P3s with [Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri], and I was like: 'Yeah, this might be working,' and then we made some good progress through the weekend. 

"We made another couple of changes going into the main quali and the main race after our learnings from the Sprint that really switched on the car, especially in the race pace. 

"[On Saturday], we struggled a lot with front deg, [and in the race], the car felt a lot better, and we went from seeing Antonelli checking out in the Sprint and giving us ten seconds, to all of a sudden having a chance to keep him behind, race him, and even, obviously, with the strategy thing of the McLarens also keep Lando behind."