WHY SAINZ SIGNED UP WITH WILLIAMS
F1’s longest transfer saga of the year is now officially over. Carlos Sainz has finally put pen to paper and signed the contract offered to him by James Vowles. Williams will be the Spaniard’s fifth team in Formula 1 after Toro Rosso, Renault, Mclaren and Ferrari since his championship debut in 2015.
It’s been six months since Sainz found out he was out of a job for 2025 following Ferrari’s signing of Lewis Hamilton. Since then, Carlos and his managers have been hoping to find another top seat, but were ultimately left to choose from some less attractive options: Audi, which was initially the frontrunner for his services; Williams, which emerged as the favourite at the beginning of the summer; and Alpine, which entered the race at the last moment.
Sainz took a wait-and-see approach – not only to explore his options, but also in the hope he might receive an offer from one of the stronger teams. Ultimately this never came.
It has looked as if Mercedes boss Toto Wolff had already chosen his protégé Andrea Kimi Antonelli as the main candidate to replace Hamilton back in the spring. Red Bull, meanwhile, inexplicably opted to extend the contract of Sergio Pérez despite a lengthening string of shaky performances. The Aston Martin option fell away even earlier when the evergreen Fernando Alonso signed a contract extension that will keep him racing until the age of 45.
One explanation for Williams getting the nod is the ambitious planning of Vowles in terms of team development. He has repeatedly emphasised that the team’s Dorilton Ventures backers are ready to invest as much as the project needs to return to the front in the long term. And the signing of
Sainz for Vowles is a useful message, not just to the backers but also to the team personnel, that Williams under him doesn’t lack ambition. It’s a strong statement indeed, given Sainz – a race winner this year with Ferrari – has picked a team which had recorded just four points before the summer break.
But it also must be pointed out that Sainz’s choice was made for a dearth of strong alternatives. In Audi’s case the most attractive part was the company’s connection to his father – Carlos Sainz Sr is a Dakar Rally winner with the German brand – but on the F1 side, there’s no denying the process of transforming the backmarking Sauber squad into a competitive works Audi team looks a difficult one. The outfit, currently branded as Stake F1 Team, didn’t score a single point before the summer break, and there’s no great reason to believe in a dramatic reversal of its fortunes in the coming years. Simply slapping an Audi logo on the cars won’t fix the team’s issues.
Alpine, meanwhile, is amid another management reshuffle, potentially followed by a course correction. Joining a team whose perspectives are so unclear would be a gamble. It’s understood Sainz had been amenable to signing but only for one year, which would have kept his options open in the hopes of a better seat for 2026. That one-year offer was never made.
There was talk, too, of Williams dangling the offer of a oneyear deal but Vowles scotched that, saying: “The message that it [the contract] was 2025 and 2026 and beyond didn’t come from us. It came from Carlos. He wanted it to be abundantly clear to all of you and the world that he is committed and this is where he wanted to be.”