Carlos Sainz Outlines Key Focus That Will Determine His 2025 F1 Performance

Saajan Jogia | Mar 1, 2025

Carlos Sainz (ESP) Williams Racing FW46. Formula One World Championship, Atlassian Williams Racing FW47 Launch, Silverstone, England, Friday 14th February 2025. / Williams Racing

Carlos Sainz has outlined the important task at hand in the first five or six Grands Prix of the season to identify where he could extract further performance from the Williams FW47 F1 car in his debut season with the team.

The Spaniard moved to Williams this year after making way for Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari, where he spent four years. Coming from a team with a winning mindset, Sainz's feedback and opinions are being taken very seriously at the Grove outfit, which is reportedly undergoing a positive transformation to become a winning team under James Vowles' leadership.

After covering considerable distance on the FW47 during pre-season testing and topping the timesheets on the second day, the 30-year-old driver admitted he is still working to unlock the car’s full potential. Since joining Williams, Sainz has logged substantial laps and believes he can extract strong performance levels, yet he remains unsure where the final two-tenths are coming from. Understanding this will be important, as it could help both him and the team identify and further exploit that extra performance. Speaking on the subject, Sainz told F1TV, as quoted by RacingNews365 in Bahrain:

"In terms of driving style, I'm still understanding what I need to do with this car to go quick, because, if I'm honest, I'm still a bit lost as to where to find the lap time.

"I don't know if it's gonna come on entries, it's gonna come on exits, minimum speeds."

He added:

"And that's why [that] run was important for me to understand where the lap time is coming from."

Sainz pointed out that identifying where the performance is coming from will be a priority for him to pinpoint in the early races of the 2025 season. He said:

"This is what I will need to discover during the first five, six races, as I put more soft tyres on the car, to try and understand where this is: where's the lap time gonna come from in this car."

Despite the performance gains on the FW47, Sainz shed light on one area where the car needs improvement after the first day of pre-season testing. F1 on SI reported:

“Overall, it was a positive first day for the team, especially given some of the track stoppages we had with the blackout.

“We managed to complete the run plan, and we got in a lot of laps, which is always the main target of the first day.

“First impressions are positive, but obviously between now and the next couple of days, we’ll try to improve the balance of the car in both short and long runs.”