Carlos Sainz has encouraged Williams to match the “obsession” that Ferrari has for discovering marginal gains in Formula 1 as he vowed that it will “make the difference”.
Sainz has commenced his new venture with Williams having lost the drive that he had held since 2021 with Ferrari amid seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton’s arrival.
The Spaniard has moved to a team that languished ninth in the Constructors’ Championship last term but is undergoing a rebuild as it aims to return to the sharp end.
Williams has conceded that 2025 could be another muted campaign as the team hedges its bets on the impending rules change in 2026 delivering a marked upturn.
But in order to realise that ambition, Sainz has urged the Grove-based squad to match the relentless attention to detail that he witnessed during his recent stint at Ferrari.
The four-time F1 race winner highlighted how he experienced that even minute improvements can soon add up to have a noticeable impact on a side’s competitiveness.
“I cannot wait to start working,” Sainz said in his initial address to his new team-mates in a video that Williams published documenting his opening day.
“I can tell you that a Formula 1 team nowadays, at the level that Ferrari is running, there’s an obsession by every single individual right there right now going for the last tenth, last hundredth of a second – and that’s a team that is struggling to beat other teams like McLaren, Mercedes or Red Bull. So the level at the front of the field right now is extremely high.
“That 1200 people that work in Ferrari, I don’t know exactly a number in Williams, you can tell they have the passion for winning, but they are obsessed with the tenth of a second, obsessed with a hundredth of a second, obsessed with the minimal detail of every single piece of the car.
“So from here, I want to motivate you all you know every single individual here that that last tenth will make the difference.
“If you add up all these milliseconds, trust me, it will pay off on track – and I have no doubts that all that you guys are all as capable as anyone at the front of the field.
“So together, let’s go be obsessed with that hundredth, because I’m sure it’s going to make the difference.”
Sainz’s infectious racing mindset
Williams boss James Vowles has regarded Sainz’s signing as a sizeable coup to his plans as the ex-Ferrari driver’s past teams have all improved with him in their line-up.
Sainz, who Vowles described as among the top two drivers in F1 at times, believes that his infectious mindset towards racing is an asset that has contributed to that trend.
When Vowles asked him what qualities he has which make him stand out, Sainz said: “I don’t know. I normally don’t like talking about myself or talking positively too much about myself, because I always find you can come out long, a bit arrogant sometimes or, let’s say, too much confidence.
“But I can just tell you that I always just give my maximum to every team. It doesn’t matter if it’s here at base or at the track.
“I always try and spend as much time as possible working together, trying to do it with a positive spirit which in the end try to bring happiness to the team, not only performance, but trying to bring a good atmosphere and try to transmit to everyone the passion that I have for this sport, which is enormous.
“I love racing, I love traveling to these races, love spending time with my engineers, spending time looking at set-ups, looking at onboards, looking at everything.
“I am a bit of a racing freak, if you want to call it like that, and I like transmitting that to the people around me.”
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