Sainz Left "Puzzled" After Early Season Struggles

Carlos Sainz has struggled in his first two races at Williams, achieving a 10th-place finish in Shanghai only after the two Ferraris were disqualified. On the other hand, his teammate Alex Albon has gotten off to a roaring start, finishing fifth and seventh, and out-qualifying his Spanish teammate.

Many expected Sainz to hit the ground running as the team leader on and off the track, especially after his promising pre-season program.

“It is one of the strangest swings of performance that I’ve had in my career, going from naturally and super-quick in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, even at the beginning of Australia, and then suddenly the pace just seemed to fall away from me," Sainz said.

Heading into the Japanese Grand Prix this week, Sainz remains searching for answers, hoping to find them in three dry practice sessions. Immediately after the race in China, he seemed lost as to where to look in the first place.

“A bit puzzled, to be honest. Not happy, because ever since I jumped in this car, I’ve been very quick in testing, but I don’t know where all that pace has gone for this weekend. At least we have now a good ten days to analyze what went wrong and put together a plan to come back stronger in Japan.”

For his part, Albon has been doing more than his share of the work, propelling the car up the grid and getting the best race results possible in his first two races. Sainz thinks that his car is not too far from Albon's, but the changes that helped Albon did not help him.

“We did a lot of setup changes that on my side of the garage, followed really what Alex did, [both cars] were pretty similar. On his side, it seemed to respond well to a front graining, and he was a lot stronger. On my side, it didn’t seem to help much, and I stayed struggling with the graining.”

Once Sainz gets firing, Williams should have a chance to reach up to 5th place in the constructors this season, significantly if Aston Martin shifts their focus early towards 2026, and provides their car with minimal upgrades.

When at their best, both Sainz and Albon can get the most out of the car, and when the opportunity is there, they can deliver shocking results even further up the grid.

Sainz enters the Japanese race week after a week of searching for answers, hoping to showcase the pace he believes he has in the car.