Williams’ performance crisis continues: will Carlos Sainz soon lose patience?

When Carlos Sainz decided to accept the offer from Williams team principal James Vowles, the Spaniard knew full well that it would take the team some time to put their plan to return to the top of the field into action. Nevertheless, the Formula 1 star – who had been sacked by Ferrari to make way for Lewis Hamilton – insisted that he believed in the project and had the patience required to wait for progress to be made.

But that was before he knew that the Grove-based team would be making a belated start to the new Formula 1 era. And to make matters worse, the car was also significantly overweight when the first Grand Prix was due to take place. Consequently, a lot of hard work is now being done behind the scenes to improve the performance of the FW48. Yet the performance crisis persists for the time being, and Sainz’s comments raise the question: is the son of the rally legend of the same name slowly losing patience?

Sainz did say: “I know an update is in the works, and normally these work for this team.” But he also emphasised, with his usual level-headedness: “However, I’m not sure if it will be enough to make up the ground we’ve lost on this type of circuit. We’ll have to work even harder than we already are.”

A big gap, bleak prospects

The 31-year-old, who finished twelfth in Barcelona, two laps behind winner Lewis Hamilton, also pointed out: “We mustn’t forget that Barcelona is a very good circuit for gauging a car’s performance. We were between 1.6 and 1.9 seconds behind the frontrunners and almost six or seven tenths behind the leading cars from the midfield.”

“The gap to the midfield is roughly as we expected. We’re struggling with the medium-speed and fast corners; that was already evident at Suzuka, where we were really far off the midfield – we were half a lap off the pace,” lamented Sainz. His forecast for the upcoming races is correspondingly cautious: “Things should be a bit better at Spielberg, but that’s not particularly encouraging, because after that we’ll be back on tracks where we’ll struggle.”

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“We mustn’t forget that there are good and bad circuits for us. After the Red Bull Ring, we’re off to Silverstone, and that’s going to be even tougher than here in Barcelona. It’s only a temporary relief to head to Canada, Monaco and Austria. Because then Silverstone, Spa and Hungary are on the schedule,” warned the four-time Grand Prix winner.