Carlos Sainz reveals surprising positive to Williams woes after 'test of faith'

Carlos Sainz has explained how Williams has made "very interesting changes" in the aftermath of its poor start to the 2026 season.

Williams was expecting to challenge at the head of the midfield in 2026 with the new technical regulations, but the FW48 machine was delivered late and considerably overweight. 

The team was the only one not to complete at least one lap during the Barcelona shakedown in January, but is slowly taking weight out of the car as the season progresses, with boss James Vowles explaining that it cannot simply do so immediately due to the cost cap restrictions on spending. 

The slump back down the midfield came as a shock for a Williams team and Sainz, which had enjoyed its best season since 2017 in 2025, with the new hire scoring two grand prix podiums on merit, the first time Williams had hauled multiple podiums since 2015.

Reflecting, Sainz admitted that the situation had "tested my faith", but that surprising progress had been made by the team in fixing its weaknesses. 

"It has tested my faith for sure. When you go from scoring podiums at the end of last year to suddenly being where we are, two-and-a-half seconds off the pace at the beginning of the year, it is a big test of faith," Sainz told media, including RacingNews365.

"It is a big shock to the system, and I was the first one to say to James and the management that it is not what was expected, and we had very open and clear conversations about where things started going wrong.

"We did a very thorough analysis with some important members of the team, and I think once we understood where it started to go wrong, I very quickly realised that it might have actually done some good things for the team. 

"If we hadn't hit this bump, I think there might have been some things in the team that never would have changed thanks to the shock of that bump. 

"James and his team took very strong action to correct them, to erase them from the system, and to make sure it does not happen again. 

"So that made me recover a lot of faith and belief in the project. 

"Last year, I think we over-delivered as a team, we did amazing, and the FW47 was a good race car with its strengths and weaknesses, but we definitely managed to create a car that was able to score podiums. 

"In my first year with the team, that was not expected. I was not expecting it. I was expecting to maybe be a solid midfield car, but not to be fighting with Mercedes and Ferrari, head-to-head on outright pace - and that probably raised my expectations for 2026.

"Then 2026 came, and it was almost the opposite, so it's been a bit of a roller coaster, let's say. 

"I was always expecting to hit a bump at some point. I think the road to recovery of a team is never a straight line, and if not the best example, with McLaren at the beginning of 2023, they were really far down, then they ended the year on a high, and from there came the big progress. 

"I think I always expected maybe not as big of a bump as we hit at the beginning, but at the same time I think it's propelled some very interesting changes inside the team, and some very interesting changes of mentality and changes of approach that were needed."