After five years at Ferrari,168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史: Carlos Sainz is having to adjust to a new F1 car, team and driving style at Williams.

Sainz joined Williams for the 2025 season after being forced to vacate his Ferrari seat to seven-time world champion168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史: Lewis Hamilton despite performing admirably alongside 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Charles Leclerc.

The 30-yeaไr-old Spaniard has also had to switch his mindset, having gone from a team capable of contesting for regular pole positions, victories and podiums to one that has spent the vast majority of the 2020s struggling to get out of Q1𒊎 and scrapping for the odd point.

Alongside 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Alex Albon, Sainz, a four-time grand prix winner, forms Williams’ strongest driver pairing for years, and the match up promises to be one of the most closel𓄧y monitored and intriguing battles of the year.

Unsurprisingly, it🌃 is Albon who boasts theಞ early upper hand as Sainz settles into his new team, scoring 42 points to Sainz’s 12 and beating the Spaniard 7-1 in grands prix. The qualifying battle has been much closer, with Sainz and Albon locked at 4-4 in regular grand prix sessions, and Albon 2-0 up in the sprint.

Sainz has made an incredibly respectable start to life at Williams and from the outside, it appears that his transition into the team couldn🥀’t have gone much smoother. But that doesn’t quite tell the full picture.

“Do🌼n’t underestimate how hard it was for me, the first t✨hree races. The adaptation process with a new team, how hard it’s been,” Sainz exclusively told at the Monaco Grand Prix.

“Even now that I’m a📖t a pretty good level with the performance of the car and the speed, even though I still think I have more to come, don’t und♒erestimate how tough it has been also understanding with my engineer, with the strategy team, to bond and to start working really, really well.

“I think it’s cost us points still, a lot of points, through not having that experience with thꦦe team. But one thing that leaves me confident is the speed. The speed i🌃s there.

“When you are quick on Saturday, when you are 🎉quick on Sunday, you know the other things will just come as soon as I get an input to improve them and we start und🦄erstanding each other better, the other things will come.

“So as long as the speed is there, I’m happy.”

What has been the biggest challenge?

Sainz has had to make tweaks to the way he drives after being “caught by surprise” by specific characteristics of Williams’ FW47. H൩e has had to relearn parts of his driving style to adapt, and he acknowledges this process has slowed him down.

As part of the same exclusive interview with mahbx.com, Sainz referred to168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史: "muscle memory" of previous cars when speaking about Hamilton's strugg༺les adapting to Ferrari's 2025 challenger after 12 years with Mercedes. 

The switch from a Ferrari power unit to Mercedes engine,🌱 for example, has been among the biggest hurdles to overcome. It is the first time in his career tꦫhat Sainz has used Mercedes power.

And Sainz is still on the path to making incremental improvements.&🧔nbsp;

“There’s things in the car that I felt in China and Australia that caught me bﷺy surprise,” Sai𓂃nz explained.

“I was very qui𓄧ck in the Abu Dhabi test with last year’s car, I was very quick in the Bahrain test, and in Melbourne until quali. And China being a sprint weekend I discovered things about the car in quali that I didn’t know were there because I didn’t experience them in testing.

“I thought I was honestly going to be putting 💮betteꦯr laps together than I did, and after I discovered this I got to work with my engineers to try to find ways to drive around them, try to change the car set-up to avoid that.

“After doing that, the last few races have been to the level that I think honestly, ꧟is better than expected.”

A qu🔜arter of the 2025 F1 season may already be complete, but the task to feel fully at one with his Williams is an ongoing journey for Sainz. 

“I’m pretty sure there’s still things to discover that will hold me back some weekends, but hopefully it’s isol🌠ated weekends where I discover one thing and I haven’t adapted to one thing.🐷”

Sainz 🦄pinpointed race execution and communication with his team as being the main areas to address and🎀 where he feels the biggest gains can be made.

“I think that’s where we need to raise the level a bit and I think ♏that’s never been my 𓄧problem,” he added.

“I think I always tend to read races we✤ll, it’s just the way I communicate to the team, the way the team understands what I’m communicating and what I get back from the team, so we do the right decision making and the right process.

“I think that hasn't been going exactly the best wa💎y recently, but I’m confident that wꦦe can get it to work well.”

Carlos Sainz feeling ‘completely at home’ at Williams

The other big aspect o⛄f Sainz’s adaptation comes outside of the cockpit.

Since first visiting Williams’ F1 fac꧃tory in Grove on 15 January, Sainz has been working hard to embed himself within the team and to familiarise himself with a new place of work, colleagues and culture at the British squad.

Four months later and Sainz says he feels “compl♐etely at home”, though he 🌼believes it will take him years to fully bond with some members of the team he has not spent enough time with.

“There’s still members of the team and people I would like to spend a bit more time with to understand b🐟etter things inside the team, and t♍his I will need for sure years to keep bonding and to keep understanding people better,” he said.

“And what they are trying to do and what we are trying to achieve 𓄧in different areas. But I th🐈ink I can be quite happy with where I am right now.”

With openings at a front-running team looking increasingly unlikely, Sainz spent several months considering his options for 2025 and beyond. These funda𝓀mentally boiled down to Williams, Sauber/Audi and Alpine.

Despite Sainz’s father, a two-time World Rally Champion, wanting his son t𓆏o seriously consider Audi’s offer, he ultimately 🌊picked Williams because he had faith in the project and vision that was sold to him ahead of a major rules shake-up coming to F1 in 2026.

There may still be a long way to go, but considering the team’s strong start to 2025 and upward⛦ trajectory, Sainz betting on Williams is already looking like a smart decision.

“Certainly I signed with Williams because I saw the potential to be back at the level that I was at with Ferrari, or any of the top teams. If n🌄ot, I would have never have signed with Williams,” Sainz said.

“I saw that potential, that vision, that project and I certainly believed that team could do it. If not, I would no𝓰t have signed. 

"I’m not going to lie, the rise in performance has come earlier and more quick than expected. With the last couple ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚof races especially, I think we were performi🤪ng at a very high level. 

"Unfortunately, the reꦬsults haven’t come very nicely on our side of the garage, even though we’ve been extremely quick on Saturdays and Sundays, the r🐷esults haven’t been backing that nice feeling.

“That’s something we are working on and it will come. We are 🅺making mistakes and it’s a year to do mistakes.”