Carlos Sainz signs for Williams Formula 1 team | Formula 1 | Sports

There will be those who say that this is a fool’s consolation, and they will no doubt be supported by an argument that is hard to refute. Few things can happen to a Formula 1 driver, accidents aside, than to be left without a steering wheel because his team is looking for someone else to take over. But a slap in the face of reality, like the one Carlos Sainz received when he learned that Ferrari had signed Lewis Hamilton to put him in their car from next year, is better borne by the many declarations of love that have been made to him since he broke down in the news before the world championship even began. Audi, which will join the competition in 2026; Williams and Alpine have tried to tempt the Spaniard, one of 13 drivers on the current grid to have won a race, one of nine to have done so more than once. He, for his part, waited as long as he could, looking for a good deal that would allow him to take the Mercedes that Hamilton would leave vacant, or the Red Bull that Checo Perez was insisting on bringing to market. Unable to specify either option, Sainz eventually settled on Williams, an option he believed would become more attractive if he heard what each man had to say.

“It is no secret that the driver market has been extremely difficult this year for several reasons and that it has taken me some time to announce my decision,” Sainz said in a statement on Monday. “However, I am fully confident that Williams is the right place to continue my journey. I am very proud to have joined such a historic team that has achieved so much success and in which so many childhood heroes have driven,” added the son of the two-time World Rally Champion (1990 and 1992). “The ultimate goal is to return Williams to its rightful place at the front of the grid,” he stressed.

At 29, the Madrid native has joined the British structure for the next two years, where he will be partnered with Alex Albon, expecting to fulfill all the promises that James Vowles made to him. The engineer, former right-hand man of Toto Wolff at Mercedes and who left his post as director of strategy and performance last year to lead Williams, has no other obsession than to return the second manufacturer with the most titles (nine) to the market. place where it deserves, and where its founder placed it between the decades of the 80s and 90s. Before his death (2021), Frank Williams sold his team to the Dorilton Capital fund, which acquired it for 180 million euros.

“I want excellence in the team. I want them to give me the performance that will allow us to win races. “I want leaders, established drivers,” Vowles responded last weekend from Belgium, the last stop on the calendar before the summer break. It was there, in Spa, that Sainz said “yes”, eliminating from the equation the other candidates who were going to get into this car, led by Valtteri Bottas. “Of all of them, Carlos is at the top of the list. I have always recognized that and I support that,” the manager said. “He won the race last year – he was the only one to break the Red Bull monopoly – and he did it very cleverly, against some of the best, like Lando (Norris) and Charles (Leclerc),” Vowles stressed.

In its quest to turn around a rather bleak moment – ​​the team is second-to-last in the manufacturers’ standings with just four points, all of them scored by Albon – Williams has put into action a quiet plan of action based on the hiring of more than two dozen specialist engineers from across the paddock, with the aim of improving the aerodynamics of its car and making it as precise as possible in view of the planned 2026 regulation shake-up. Among them are names such as Matt Harman, the former technical director of Alpine, who stepped down from his role earlier this year. As for this updated rules cycle, which will take place in a season and a half, the biggest unknown revolves around the performance that the new generation of engines will offer. In this sense, the alliance that Williams maintains with Mercedes as a supplier should be an insurance policy both for the hopes of Grove’s soldiers and for Sainz himself.

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