Racing
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Carlos Sainz says Williams’ disappointing 2026 season has pushed back his expected route back to Formula 1 victory by “a year or two” and will force a summer-break review of his future with the team.
Speaking to PlanetF1.com and other media outlets in Budapest, the Williams driver admitted the project has not progressed as he expected after joining the team. “My expectations, or let’s say, my timeline for how long it would take me to win a race again and for Williams to be the place to do that, have been delayed by a year or two,” Sainz said. He added that “the path is going to be longer than expected” because “this year’s car has been very underperforming and has fallen very short of our expectations.”
That marks a sharp change from the picture Williams had hoped to paint under Formula 1’s 2026 rules. After Sainz helped the team to fifth in the 2025 constructors’ championship with two podium finishes, Williams targeted a major step forward. Instead, it arrived at the Hungarian Grand Prix eighth in the standings with just 11 points, while Sainz had scored only three ninth-place finishes.
The first half of the season ended in another difficult weekend in Budapest. Sainz qualified 18th and finished 18th, then described the opening half of the year as “bad, very bad, disappointing.” He said the FW48’s weakness is not limited to one update area, insisting: “The problem is not the front wing, it’s the whole car that simply does not generate enough downforce.” He also said that, for the most part, Williams has been running at the back because of a lack of pace.
Even with the results sliding, Sainz made clear he has not lost faith in the longer-term project. He said he can still see “what the team is investing in the future” and remains “confident in the path and the project that we are in.” Whether that confidence is rewarded quickly, he said, now depends on “how quickly we manage to bounce back from this situation.”
The problem for Sainz is that the delay changes his own career horizon. He said his “timings have changed” and that he needs to “readapt my thinking into portraying myself now in three to four years’ time” before making a call. Asked when that decision will come, Sainz said: “I honestly don’t know.” He added that he had always expected to wait until the summer to sit down “with my team and think about this and discuss with them, with James and everyone, the future of the team and my future in it.”
For now, that leaves Williams facing a critical next step after a season that has fallen well short of plan, with Sainz saying that “during the summer we will start to take a decision and start to see a bit more of the situation” as he weighs whether the team can still become the place that takes him back to winning.