The reasons behind Sainz's struggles and slow Williams start

Over the course of the second half of the 2024 season, Williams boss James Vowles was beaming after securing the capture of Ferrari refugee Carlos Sainz. 

Sainz bought into the Vowles rebuild of the team and he was not afraid to tell anyone who'd listen that he had the best driver line-up on the grid. 

Pre-season testing in Bahrain pointed towards that being not an outlandish statement after Sainz set the overall fastest time of the test, but team-mate Alex Albon had the decidedly upper hand in Australia. 

Sainz qualified in 10th in Melbourne, but was some 0.325s down on Albon, with this coming down to 0.134s in China, although Albon was 10th and Sainz in 15th, for an average of 0.229s with Albon's average grid position being 8.5 to Sainz's 12.5.

In races, Sainz appears to be struggling even more as Albon raced to fourth on the road in Melbourne, although it would become fifth once Kimi Antonelli's five-second penalty was rescinded, before going onto take seventh in Shanghai once the disqualifications of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were applied.

It means he has 16 points after just two races, eclipsing his entire total of 12 from 2024, whilst Sainz only squeaked onto the points board once the Ferraris were kicked out, and also benefited from Pierre Gasly being removed from the results for an underweight car, having crashed out at Albert Park with a "torque surge" from the engine.

It's an inauspicious start for Sainz as Williams is currently above even Ferrari in the constructors' standings having enjoyed its best start to a season since Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas hauled 20 points from the first two races of 2016.

So, what is going on? Well, according to Sainz, he feels something "fundamental" has been missed.

Sainz's struggles

"It is something that obviously puzzles me because ever since I jumped into this car, I've been really quick, in Abu Dhabi and in Bahrain testing," says Sainz to media including RacingNews365.

"A Sprint weekend never helps with the learning because you cannot test much, but [China] was also my first race distance which I couldn't do in Melbourne. 

"But my feeling is that there is something fundamental I got wrong and that we need to analyse.

"I can be very quick in certain corners and in certain scenarios, it is just when you go to push a bit further to find the lap-time as the track ramps up, whatever I seem to be doing doesn't pay off and I seem to be going slower than quicker.

"It is a bit of a counterintuitive thing going on right now."

The Williams view

Much has been made from Albon and Williams of picking Sainz's brain on how it can better improve its own practices and methods as it rebuilds with four years of precious Ferrari knowledge locked inside the Spanish racer's brain. 

Engineering chief Dave Robson believes the four-time race winner is not actually missing much, it is more an adjustment to Williams, especially in qualifying, where he also spied an improvement the team could make to help Sainz adjust quicker.

"So it was interesting in Melbourne," says Robson, Williams' chief engineer.

"In terms of being on top of how to set the car up, how it behaves, what the switches do and how we go about our business, I think he is on top of all that, and even with a day-and-a-half of testing in Bahrain, it wasn't a problem.

"Obviously simulating the exact circumstances of a qualifying session are nigh on impossible, and what we saw in Bahrain was some of our own relative weaknesses, maybe in terms of how we can brief the drivers between runs when you've got very little time, and it is probably a little bit below what he is used to. 

"But we didn't really see that in Bahrain because we didn't really do a genuine qualifying session, so there is a bit of that, and maybe some of the switch changes we were asking him to do were not quite what he was expecting."

For the first time in his career, Sainz is also using a Mercedes power unit having used Ferrari and Renault units during his spells at Ferrari, McLaren, Renault, and Toro Rosso, but again, this is not something Robson feels is a great issue for the veteran of 208 grand prix starts.

"It would be a little bit more work on our steering wheel, on out-laps and then the heat stresses, the driver communications, the race engineer pushing to the limit when you've got 19 other cars all fighting for that small bit of track space," he says of areas to improve.

"It is a few of those things we just need to better understand, how to give him the information he needs that will lead to lap-time.

"But in terms of driving the car and setting it up, he's not behind the curve at all."