changes” in the aftermath of its poor start to the 2026 season.
Williams was expecting to challenge at the head of the midfield in
2026 with the new technical regulations, but the FW48 machine was
delivered late and considerably overweight. The team was the only
one not to complete at least one lap during the Barcelona shakedown
in January, but is slowly taking weight out of the car as the
season progresses, with boss James Vowles explaining that it cannot
simply do so immediately due to the cost cap restrictions on
spending. The slump back down the midfield came as a shock for a
Williams team and Sainz, which had enjoyed its best season since
2017 in 2025, with the new hire scoring two grand prix podiums on
merit, the first time Williams had hauled multiple podiums since
2015. Reflecting, Sainz admitted that the situation had “tested my
faith”, but that surprising progress had been made by the team in
fixing its weaknesses. “It has tested my faith for sure. When you
go from scoring podiums at the end of last year to suddenly being
where we are, two-and-a-half seconds off the pace at the beginning
of the year, it is a big test of faith,” Sainz told media,
including RacingNews365. “It is a big shock to the system, and I
was the first one to say to James and the management that it is not
what was expected, and we had very open and clear conversations
about where things started going wrong. “We did a very thorough
analysis with some important members of the team, and I think once
we understood where it started to go wrong, I very quickly realised
that it might have actually done some good things for the team.
“If we hadn’t hit this bump, I think there might have been some
things in the team that never would have changed thanks to the
shock of that bump. “James and his team took very strong action to
correct them, to erase them from the system, and to make sure it
does not happen again. “So that made me recover a lot of faith and
belief in the project. “Last year, I think we over-delivered as a
team, we did amazing, and the FW47 was a good race car with its
strengths and weaknesses, but we definitely managed to create a car
that was able to score podiums. “In my first year with the team,
that was not expected. I was not expecting it. I was expecting to
maybe be a solid midfield car, but not to be fighting with Mercedes
and Ferrari, head-to-head on outright pace – and that probably
raised my expectations for 2026. “Then 2026 came, and it was almost
the opposite, so it’s been a bit of a roller coaster, let’s say.
“I was always expecting to hit a bump at some point. I think the
road to recovery of a team is never a straight line, and if not the
best example, with McLaren at the beginning of 2023, they were
really far down, then they ended the year on a high, and from there
came the big progress. “I think I always expected maybe not as big
of a bump as we hit at the beginning, but at the same time I think
it’s propelled some very interesting changes inside the team, and
some very interesting changes of mentality and changes of approach
that were needed.”