How Carlos Sainz is feeling the exact same pain as Lewis Hamilton
Carlos Sainz has admitted the Williams is “not a car I love to drive” with a “very particular” style required during the F1 2025 season.
It comes after Lewis Hamilton, Sainz’s replacement at Ferrari for the F1 2025 season, revealed that he has been forced to adopt an “alien driving style” for the current campaign.
Carlos Sainz: Williams ‘not a car I love to drive’Sainz was informed ahead of the 2024 season that he would be replaced by Hamilton for 2025, with the Spaniard responding by producing the most impressive campaign over his career, culminating in two wins in Australia and Mexico.
Despite his high reputation, Sainz has struggled for consistency at Williams and trails teammate Alex Albon, in his fourth full season with the team, by 54 points with eight races remaining.
Sainz failed to score for the sixth race running at last weekend’s Italian Grand Prix, where Albon finished an impressive seventh.
The Spaniard has failed to add to his tally since scoring one point for 10th place at June’s Canadian Grand Prix.
Carlos Sainz vs Alex Albon: Williams head-to-head scores for F1 2025👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates
👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates
Speaking after last Sunday’s race, Sainz insisted that he has felt “relatively good” behind the Williams so far this season.
Yet he conceded that the car is not among his favourites given the unusual driving style required.
He told PlanetF1.com’s Thomas Maher and other publications at Monza: “I think I’ve been feeling good with the car all year. Relatively good.
“It’s not a car I love to drive. It’s not my driving style that I love to do. It’s a very particular thing that you need to do with the driving [with this car].
“But for our first year, my qualifying record and my race pace is always good.
“It’s just putting a result together where we are struggling a lot as a team today.
“[At Monza] we also had battery issues during the whole race that we didn’t have on Friday, so always little things – incidents, a little bit of strategy, a little bit of new things – that despite having the pace all year, we don’t seem to catch a break.”
Asked to describe the exact nature of his battery issues, he replied: “Depending on how close I was to the car in front, on temperatures I was losing a lot of deployment.”
More on Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton from PlanetF1.comSainz’s comments come after Hamilton, who claimed his best result since July’s British Grand Prix by finishing sixth at Monza, admitted that he remains far from comfortable with the SF-25 car.
It emerged during the recent summer break that Ferrari’s engine braking system remains a significant hurdle in Hamilton’s attempts to adjust to his new team, with the Scuderia’s system said to be very different to that Hamilton used at previous team Mercedes.
Ferrari’s engine braking, combined with his struggles with Brembo’s brake materials, is believed to have contributed to Hamilton’s unusual spin at the Belgian Grand Prix earlier this season.
Hamilton said at Monza: “Ultimately, [I’m] driving [with] an alien driving style, with a car that I’m not 100 per cent comfortable with.
“I think what’s clear for me is that I know I’ve been driving this car all year long, but in my previous years I was a part of a car that you’re evolving over time.
“You’re comfortable with it and know the driving style inside and out.
“This year, I’m arriving at the track and having to apply this new driving style that’s still alien to me. It doesn’t feel natural.
“To a car, that’s how it likes to work, so through the race I’m just getting better and better and faster and faster – and unlocking with that a gain of confidence.”
“Hopefully next year it’s not a driving style that’s here, so hopefully I can go back a little bit towards what I would choose to do.”
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