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Carlos Sainz Jnr

2025 F1 season/2025 Japanese Grand Prix/carlos sainz jnr/Formula 1/Liam Lawson

‘Just the way things are in Red Bull’ · RaceFans

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Carlos Sainz Jnr said the news Red Bull had dropped Liam Lawson after just two rounds came as no surprise to him.

The former Red Bull junior team member said their decision to send Lawson back to their junior squad so early is typical of how they run their young driver programme.

“I just think it’s nothing new,” he told the official F1 channel. “It’s just the Red Bull and the way things are handled in Red Bull and the way things go in Red Bull.

“We’ve seen it in the last 10 years in Formula 1, or since I’m in F1, that’s the way things are done there. One day you get the chance, the next day if you don’t do exactly the way you’re expected to do you get the upgrade or the downgrade.”

Sainz spent almost three seasons driving for Red Bull’s second team in F1 before leaving the team. While Max Verstappen, his first team mate in F1, was promoted to Red Bull in his second season, the team never did the same for Sainz and did not take the chance to hire him as a replacement for the struggling Sergio Perez last year.

However Sainz declined to say whether Red Bull is facing a shortage of capable team mates to Verstappen now because it failed to give him an opportunity.

“Everyone says it’s the toughest job in Formula 1 being next to Max in a car that Max knows so well,” he said. “If that’s what people are [saying], I guess it’s a good thing for me, but at the same time I don’t care because I’m in the place that I want to be right now and in a good place also for my future, for myself and I cannot wait to see where we go.”

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Red Bull has a track record of making early changes to its driver line-up. Four races into 2016 they demoted Daniil Kvyat, in his second year at the team, in favour of Verstappen. Three years later Red Bull dropped Pierre Gasly after giving him just 12 races.

Gasly acknowledged he “can obviously relate” to Lawson’s situation but said it’s “very difficult to judge anything from the outside” after Red Bull replaced him with Yuki Tsunoda.

“I think only Liam can know his situation and know all the details from it and [you’ve] just got to respect that we’re all trying our best with the tools we have,” he said. “I’ve got no doubts both of them are going to do really well but it’s not really for me to comment because you never really know what’s going on.”

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carlos sainz jnr/Drive to Survive/Formula 1/James Vowles/Williams

Vowles reveals reality behind Drive to Survive portrayal of Sainz talks· RaceFans

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Williams team principal James Vowles has explained how his attempts to sign Carlos Sainz Jnr last year differed from its portrayal in Drive to Survive.

Vowles’ efforts to court Sainz are highlighted in the fourth episode of the latest season, which premiered earlier this month.

The episode shows Vowles vying for Sainz’s signature alongside competing bids from Sauber and Alpine. The process lasted several months: Vowles first approached Sainz at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in December 2023, it became public knowledge the driver would leave Ferrari in February last year and Williams announced he had signed for them the following July.

One scene in the middle of the episode shows an anxious Vowles waiting as Sainz fails to appear on time to sign his contract. However the Williams team principal said he was always in close communication with his future driver.

Flavio Briatore, Drive to Survive season seven, 2024
Rival team bosses like Flavio Briatore courted Sainz

“All the way through – unlike what’s been portrayed, actually – Carlos and I were speaking daily or certainly every few days,” he told the official F1 channel. “There was never a break in communication.”

Although the likes of Alpine’s Flavio Briatore did make approaches to Sainz, Vowles said the driver never failed to keep him informed about the situation. “He was honest and transparent, as I was, all the way through on what his feelings and thoughts were,” said Vowles.

“That’s what’s made it, effectively, I think, a strong relationship, because that transparency from me showed him: ‘here’s our weaknesses, our strengths, here’s what’s happening’. When you do that across three weeks, four weeks, you can hide certain things. [But if] you do that across six months, which is what we were talking for, you can’t hide anything.

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Toto Wolff, George Russell, Drive to Survive season seven, 2024
Review: Play or skip? RaceFans’ verdict on every episode of Drive to Survive season seven

“[It was] the same from him. I saw the real Carlos underneath all of it, and that was important to me. I can see what his weakness is and his strengths were, and it’s why I could determine it really would work for all parties.”

Vowles said it had been a risky decision to allow the Drive to Survive producers to film their discussions and he was pleased with the depiction of them in the series.

“I think Netflix did a really good job,” he said. “It was even more twists and turns than you saw there.

“They captured a little bit of it, because we let them into our life. A big risk on our behalf, because at certain points, we could have looked like fools. But actually, capturing the emotion you go through when you’re going in this roller coaster, I think it’s a good thing for the sport to understand what really happens underneath. But there were more twists and turns than that.”

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2025 Chinese Grand Prix/2025 F1 season/alexander albon/Andrea Kimi Antonelli/carlos sainz jnr/charles leclerc/Driver of the Weekend/Esteban Ocon/Fernando Alonso/Gabriel Bortoleto/George Russell/Isack Hadjar/Jack Doohan/Lance Stroll/Lando Norris/Lewis Hamilton/Liam Lawson/Max Verstappen/Nico Hulkenberg/Oliver Bearman/Oscar Piastri/Pierre Gasly/Yuki Tsunoda

Vote for your 2025 Chinese Grand Prix F1 Driver of the Weekend

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Start, Shanghai International Circuit, 2025


Which Formula 1 driver made the most of the Chinese Grand Prix weekend?

It’s time to give your verdict on which driver did the best with the equipment at their disposal over the last three days.

Review how each driver got on below and vote for who impressed you the most at Shanghai International Circuit.

Driver performance summary

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Vote for your driver of the weekend

Which driver do you think did the best job throughout the race weekend?

Who got the most out of their car in qualifying and the race? Who put their team mate in the shade?

Cast your vote below and explain why you chose the driver you picked in the comments.

Who was the best driver of the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix weekend?

  • No opinion (0%)
  • Gabriel Bortoleto (0%)
  • Nico Hulkenberg (0%)
  • Carlos Sainz Jnr (0%)
  • Alexander Albon (1%)
  • Yuki Tsunoda (0%)
  • Isack Hadjar (2%)
  • Oliver Bearman (11%)
  • Esteban Ocon (8%)
  • Pierre Gasly (0%)
  • Jack Doohan (1%)
  • Fernando Alonso (0%)
  • Lance Stroll (0%)
  • George Russell (11%)
  • Andrea Kimi Antonelli (1%)
  • Liam Lawson (0%)
  • Max Verstappen (12%)
  • Lewis Hamilton (4%)
  • Charles Leclerc (1%)
  • Oscar Piastri (47%)
  • Lando Norris (1%)

Total Voters: 85

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2025 australian grand prix/carlos sainz jnr/Formula 1/Williams

Williams explain role played by car’s systems in Sainz’s race-ending crash · RaceFans

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Williams team principal James Vowles has shed further light on what caused Carlos Sainz Jnr to crash out on the first lap of the Australian Grand Prix.

The team’s new driver spun into a barrier at the final corner in the wet conditions shortly after the start of the race. The Safety Car had been deployed due to Jack Doohan’s crash moments earlier.

Vowles said the combination of low-grip conditions and unexpected power delivery while the FW47 was in its Safety Car mode led to Sainz spinning.

“He was coming through the last corner, he was in second gear, he held a fairly constant throttle position – actually a tiny bit lower, a percent or two lower – and pulled for an upshift into third gear, so it’s a part throttle upshift,” said Vowles in a video released by the team.

“When he did so, what happens inside those conditions is we’re in a different mode, it’s a Safety Car mode, so that runs the systems in a very different way if we’re in flat out. And what happens is, as you would imagine, we have a disengagement of power and torque and then a re-engagement of power and torque.

“Now, there was a tiny bit more than would have been expected. For me, it was an accumulation of conditions.”

The team is looking into what changes it needs to make to prevent a repeat of the problem. “First and foremost, I think what we have to review is how and what we’re doing with those settings and that Safety Car mode in wet conditions,” said Vowles. “I don’t think we were optimum, and that’s on us as a team.

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“The second is that it was treacherous out there. I really can’t state that enough. When you’re going slowly, your tyre temperatures are being lost, any small amount of additional grip loss will be accentuated, and I think that’s what we have there.

“We’re still ongoing in terms of reviewing because clearly we need to make sure that we’re improving in every single area and providing a car to the drivers that’s predictable and consistent.”

After retiring from the race Sainz joined the team on the pit wall to help them react to the changing conditions with the remaining car driven by his team mate Alexander Albon, which led to him finishing a strong fifth. Vowles said the team was grateful for his input.

“What Carlos was doing was trying to provide as much information as possible, be that about car performance, the conditions, what was coming in on the weather radar,” said Vowles. “And his insight was fantastic. It was useful, it was clear.

“He actually said it was more nerve-wracking being up there on the pit wall, with the amount of information coming in, than driving around the car in those conditions, which I don’t believe for a second. But irrespective, it was still great to have him by our side.”

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2025 australian grand prix/2025 F1 season/carlos sainz jnr/Formula 1

Torque spike or ‘black line’? Teams’ competing explanations for Sainz’s crash · RaceFans

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Williams is looking into whether Carlos Sainz Jnr’s car contributed to the crash which put him out of the Australian Grand Prix.

However at least one of their rivals believe he simply lost control of his car on a black painted line at the final corner, which could have been difficult to see.

Sainz crashed out at the end of the first racing lap in damp conditions at Albert Park. His FW47 snapped around as he approached turn 14 and hit a barrier.

Team principal James Vowles said they will look into the role played by Sainz’s up-shift as he approached the corner.

“We need to look into it more,” said Vowles in a video released by the team. “It was just a simple up-shift on a very difficult point in time on a slippery track that seemed to bring the car around with a little bit more power or torque than we expected.

“Now, it’s fine margins, but we need to make sure that as a team we’re providing stable platforms to all of our drivers in all circumstances.”

However Sainz’s former team Ferrari had another theory for the crash. They believe he was caught out by a lack of grip on a black painted line on the track surface at the corner. The team passed that information on to Charles Leclerc during the race to help him avoid the same mistake.

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“Carlos spun in turn 14 on the black line,” Leclerc’s race engineer Bryan Bozzi told him while he circulated behind the Safety Car as Sainz’s Williams was cleared away. “At the turn-in of turn 14 there is a black line and he spun on the black line.”

“So the black line is the one a metre and a half or two metres on the outside of the track, right?” Leclerc asked as he passed the crash scene. “If you take the limit of the track on the left it’s two metres more inside than that and it’s a big black line, right, at the last corner?”

“Yes, it’s about two metres from the left-hand side of the track, just before you’re turning into 14,” Bozzi told him. “So yeah, it could be that one.”

Lewis Hamilton’s race engineer Ricardo Adami told him: “Avoid the black paint line inside 14. That’s why Sainz spun. Avoid the black paint.”

Sainz believes there was a “combination of factors” behind his error. “We managed to spot it on the data and see exactly what happened and what caused the situation,” he said.

“Obviously it’s not the way you want to start the year and a bit of an unfortunate situation. But we move on, not the first race we wanted, but at the same time I’m quick, I feel comfortable in the car and now we need to get the year started.”

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2025 australian grand prix/2025 F1 season/alexander albon/carlos sainz jnr/Formula 1

Sainz was behind “perfect” strategy call for Albon

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Alexander Albon admitted he did not agree with the pit stop call made by his team mate which earned him a surprise fifth place in the Australian Grand Prix.

Carlos Sainz Jnr crashed out on the first lap of the race. He returned to the team’s garage where he assisted them with their strategy calls in the rain-affected race.

Following a light shower early in the race, the rain intensified later on, and the race-leading McLaren drivers briefly went off at turn 12. Some drivers pitted immediately in reaction, including Albon, at Sainz’s urging.

“At least being outside of the car I could help the strategy team do the right call with Alex,” said Sainz during the race. “I think we might have just boxed Alex on the perfect lap. So at least I have been useful out of the car too.”

Albon admitted he had doubts about the decision at the time, but was thrilled with the outcome, and thanked the team’s head of race strategy Charles-Antoine Florentin.

“It was a great strategy,” he told the official F1 channel. “I have to say Charles, our strategist, did a great job.

“I didn’t agree with his call to put me in. The track was bone-dry in sector one and two when I came out, but it was the right call and I’m just really happy for everyone.”

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Thanks to the well-timed change, Albon finished fifth. He was temporarily promoted to fourth when Andrea Kimi Antonelli received a five-second time penalty for an unsafe release in the pit lane, but Mercedes successfully overturned that decision after the race.

This is Williams’ first top-five finish in a grand prix which lasted more than a lap for eight years. George Russell finished second in the single-lap Belgian Grand Prix of 2021, before which Lance Stroll’s third place at Baku in 2017 was Williams’ most recent top-five result.

“It feels weird, because a P4 is very special,” he said. “But for it to happen in the first race, you almost lose the appreciation for what it is.”

He was particularly pleased with his car’s performance in conditions which have not suited Williams in recent seasons.

“This is for everyone at Grove as well, for all their work,” he said. “It’s been a really strong winter and we had a great day yesterday.

“Today was windy, mixed conditions. It’s what we hate, actually, and despite all of that we still had a relatively competitive car. I think we still were one of the quickest midfield runners out there today and I’m positive for things to come.”

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Vote for your 2025 Australian Grand Prix F1 Driver of the Weekend

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Start, Albert Park, 2025


Which Formula 1 driver made the most of the Australian Grand Prix weekend?

It’s time to give your verdict on which driver did the best with the equipment at their disposal over the last three days.

Review how each driver got on below and vote for who impressed you the most at Albert Park.

Driver performance summary

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Vote for your driver of the weekend

Which driver do you think did the best job throughout the race weekend?

Who got the most out of their car in qualifying and the race? Who put their team mate in the shade?

Cast your vote below and explain why you chose the driver you picked in the comments.

Who was the best driver of the 2025 Australian Grand Prix weekend?

  • No opinion (0%)
  • Gabriel Bortoleto (1%)
  • Nico Hulkenberg (6%)
  • Carlos Sainz Jnr (0%)
  • Alexander Albon (10%)
  • Yuki Tsunoda (1%)
  • Isack Hadjar (4%)
  • Oliver Bearman (0%)
  • Esteban Ocon (0%)
  • Pierre Gasly (0%)
  • Jack Doohan (1%)
  • Fernando Alonso (0%)
  • Lance Stroll (1%)
  • George Russell (2%)
  • Andrea Kimi Antonelli (19%)
  • Liam Lawson (0%)
  • Max Verstappen (8%)
  • Lewis Hamilton (1%)
  • Charles Leclerc (0%)
  • Oscar Piastri (2%)
  • Lando Norris (42%)

Total Voters: 83

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2025 australian grand prix/2025 F1 season/Audi/carlos sainz jnr/Formula 1/Williams

My father is disappointed I turned down Audi’s “great offer”

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Carlos Sainz Jnr has revealed his two-time World Rally champion father wanted him to join a different Formula 1 team this year.

After learning he would lose his seat at Ferrari this year, Sainz spent several months considering his options, and eventually chose to join Williams.

However his father, who scored his fourth Dakar Rally victory with Audi last year, wanted his son to seriously consider the manufacturer’s offer. Audi will rebrand Sauber’s F1 team next year.

“My father, Carlos, is still disappointed that I didn’t choose Audi’s great offer a few months ago,” the F1 driver told Blick.

“After my dream of moving to Red Bull or Mercedes fell through, I had to decide between Audi, Alpine, and Williams. After visiting the factories and having discussions, my gut feeling immediately told me – go to Williams. They want a better future. And when my heart also said yes, the decision was made.”

Sainz added: “I hope that my father, who had great times with Audi, will soon be happy that I chose Williams.”

Speaking ahead of this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, Sainz said his first impression of his new team was positive.

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“As soon as I jumped into the car [last year] and started working with the people I was going to work with this year, I felt I had just joined a team full of motivation, full of people wanting to bring this team back to the front,” he said.

“The car also didn’t disappoint me. It was a good test overall in Abu Dhabi and we’ve had a strong winter of development. We’ve tried to hit the ground running this year and we’ve had a positive test.”

However Sainz said it’s too early to predict how competitive the team might be. “Are we going to be half a second, one second off the leaders? I don’t know.

“But hopefully we can show progress. I think that’s the fundamental word for us this year: keep showing progress as a team and see where we end up.”

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‘Simulators aren’t as good as engineers believe’ · RaceFans

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Carlos Sainz Jnr has called on Formula 1 to ease its tight restrictions on track testing by limiting how much teams can use their simulators.

F1’s rules permit teams a single, three-day pre-season test session using their current cars. They are allowed to run older chassis under the Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) regulations, but this is also subject to mileage limits for the first time this year.

Sainz, who has joined Williams from Ferrari this year, said his day-and-a-half’s running in the FW47 was insufficient.

“It feels weird that I got a day and a half and now I need to go racing,” he said. “It feels not enough, it feels very little. Ridiculously little, the amount of time that we get into our cars before going to a race.”

He said the limits on testing are particularly tough on F1’s rookies. Six drivers will start their first full seasons in Melbourne later this month.

“I’m just obviously wishing them all the best and understanding a bit their frustration with testing, because even though I’m obviously no rookie, that day-and-a-half of testing I think is frustrating for me too but I cannot imagine [how it is] for a rookie. I understand how difficult that makes things and how tricky the start of the season will be for some of these guys.

“If you could get that TPC car [running] also, that is relevant and that can still help a lot, but experience is experience and you only gain that on-track with a real car that you are going to drive that the year.”

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While track testing is strictly limited, teams can run their simulators as much as they like, and often use them during grand prix weekends to conduct simultaneous tests using live track data. But Sainz, who became a director of the Grand Prix Drivers Association last month, believes simulators are less useful than real-world testing and teams should have the choice between how much of the two they can do.

“I think F1, if I’m honest, could do a bit of an effort in trying to do a better job in how we go testing,” he said. “You have a lot of teams spending infinite amounts of money in simulators, to have drivers flying to the UK from Monaco to go to the simulator, and I don’t understand why we get three days of testing when all that money could be invested into – I don’t know – eight days of testing.

“I’m not asking for too much. Eight, 10 days where every team picks their places to test. It’s nice to have a collective test, I think it should stay, but my proposal would be to put in the budget cap the number of [test] days, put in the budget cap the simulator also, and see where the teams want to spend their money, if it’s in the sim or if it’s in 10 testing days.

“Rookies would benefit and I think F1 teams would benefit because even though the simulators are good, they are not as good as some of the engineers or people tend to believe they are. So I would always choose testing and for [the rookies] also than to go into a simulator.”

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Sainz narrowly leads Ferrari pair in second day of test · F1 · RaceFans

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Carlos Sainz Jnr finished his allocation of pre-season testing for Williams by putting them on top of the times on the second day of running in Bahrain,

The driver who was fastest in pre-season testing last year, for Ferrari, posted the quickest time of the test so far. He set a 1’29.348 shortly after returning to the cockpit following the lunch break.

The two cars of his former team got within a tenth of a second of his time, Lewis Hamilton second for Ferrari ahead of Charles Leclerc.

Sainz was one of two drivers to complete the entire day solo. He logged 127 laps, the most of any driver. Liam Lawson, the other driver who had a car to himself all day, fell short of the 100-lap count after being confined to his garage towards the end of the morning session with an apparent power unit problem.

There was little to separate the Mercedes drivers, George Russell just six-thousandths of a second faster than Andrea Kimi Antonelli as they completed the top five.

Yesterday’s pace-setters McLaren were further down the order but seemed to have plenty of pace in hand. Towards the end of the afternoon session Lando Norris set a series of personal best times in the first two sectors, and the fastest time of all in the middle sector, but chose not to complete his laps. He and Oscar Piastri ended the day ahead of only the Sauber and Haas drivers.

The Haas pair occupied the bottom places on the times sheets for the second day in a row. As yesterday, Esteban Ocon and Oliver Bearman appeared to prioritise high-fuel runs.

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Bahrain test day two times

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