Carlos Sainz cannot wait to see the results of his input in the design of the F1 2026, but he is not feeling too optimistic on expectation side.
Having joined Williams in F1 2025 when there was no input from Sainz in designing of the car, the Spaniard had to undergo several experiments during the course of the season to understand its weakness and apply solutions to make it reliable and faster in the all-round zone.
The Spaniard’s tricks worked at several tracks where Williams were weak. Teammate Alexander Albon praised his work as well along with team boss James Vowles, as Sainz showed his worth as a race winner. The real test will come in F1 2026, when the Spaniard will have his inputs in the design.
A large part of the year was spent in getting things right for 2026 and in few weeks time, everything will become clear if Sainz and Williams have done a good job or not. “First of all I cannot wait to also have an influence on the design of the car and the setup philosophy and the direction that the car can take to 2026 to make the drivers feel a bit more comfortable or a bit more at ease from the get-go, from the baseline of the car that we put on track,” he said to media.
“I think we can do steps forward already on that side, but I think once the season starts, the driver is going to have more of an influence on software development with HPP, in this case Mercedes, I think the power unit is going to be a huge thing and having two experienced drivers like Alex and I, in that sense could help, and then when it comes to setup development, it’s more like, keep doing what we’ve done in 2025.
“And just have the effect of before the pre-season test, before we put the car on track and then have the effect of during the year how to make the car quicker,” summed up Sainz, who having said that, doesn’t have high expectations from total reset. He feels if they were to continue with the same regulations, he knew there was a chance Williams would be in a good place.
But with everything new, he cannot put any expectation for now. He will only know once the car hits the track and in the first few rounds where it stacks up. “I think 2026 is such a big change of regulations that I don’t plan to change my expectations too much because it’s not like the new regulations give me any stronger feeling that we can do a step forward,” continued Sainz.
“I think if the regulations would have been stable, given that we’ve done a few races in 2025 where we’ve been two to four tenths of pole position and race pace, I would say this team with another same stable set of regulations and having so clear now what the car weaknesses are and where we need to improve and seeing the team capacity to improve them, I would feel more confident let’s say that we can keep doing these incremental steps in the next two or three years to get to the top.
“But the new set of regulations is such a reset for everyone, for all the engineers, for myself that I don’t feel any more confident about it because we could do it really well and put together a very good car for 2026 but at the same time very quickly you can get it wrong and you need to reset and find the right way that maybe another team has found a loophole or a direction that you never thought would be possible. That’s why for 2026, I think we need to stay super focused and calm about our expectations,” summed up Sainz.
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Here’s Carlos Sainz on his work in F1 2025