Carlos Sainz Discusses Balance Issue in Williams Car, Hints at More Performance to Come

Williams driver Carlos Sainz managed to outqualify his teammate Alex Albon for the first time in the 2025 season in Bahrain, working himself into Q3 while Albon was left out in Q1.

In all fairness, Albon did not get a real chance to fight for a higher qualification since he was only eliminated from Q1 after Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg went over track limits, but his lap time was not deleted until 40 minutes later.

Still, Sainz put in a strong qualifying session and seemed comfortable in the car for the first season over a single lap.

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"Yeah I had a positive quali, I felt I was for the first time in the year being close to extracting I think the maximum amount of the car in single lap pace."

"[There are] still things that I want to improve fine-tune on things here and there with my driving and the setup of the car."

carlos arriving at the paddock pic.twitter.com/2LrBScj8QK
— best of carlos sainz (@sainzfiles) April 17, 2025

"We are still struggling a bit with an underlying balance issue that we are trying to get rid of with this car but we are investigating it and really trying to put all of our brain to see what we can do with setup and tools that we have at the track."

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"In development, I don't think we will get much of an opportunity to improve it given we are putting all of our eggs into next year's basket so yeah a lot of work being done in between races to understand this."

"A difficult race choosing to fight cars that maybe I shouldn't have chosen to fight but it's been a bit of a long time for me since I was fighting these guys."

"I was comfortable enough to fight them, so looking back, I would have definitely eased off a bit on the fight to them and just focus on getting the points, which in the midfield is a trade-off that I maybe need to remind myself about."

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Sainz has noted that this was the first race of the season that featured him properly fighting other cars for points, rather than working himself up the grid from an unrepresentive qualifying position.

There's some lore behind this one 😏

Carlos Sainz goes wheel-to-wheel with his Ferrari replacement Lewis Hamilton during a great battle in Bahrain ⚔️#F1 #BahrainGP pic.twitter.com/zOONDlHHfN
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 14, 2025

"I forgot maybe that Bahrain is just quite easy to pass in the end so sooner or later these cars were gonna pass me if it wasn't on track it was with strategy," Sainz said.

"I probably just should have and this is my mistake more focus, more on just bringing home the couple of points that were maybe available at the time, and yeah remind myself that that's the target right now, and yeah, there will be more time to fight the others maybe in other occasions," he added.

Sainz fiercely battled Yuki Tsunoda, resulting in Yuki damaging Carlos's sidepod, which ultimately forced him to retire from the race.

The Spanish driver will look to build on his momentum heading into the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

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