Sainz says Williams must fix FW48 after Spain blow

Carlos Sainz said the Spanish Grand Prix exposed just how far Williams’ FW48 is from where it was meant to be, with excess weight and a lack of downforce leaving the car badly exposed in medium- and high-speed corners.

Barcelona delivered a clear reality check for the team. Sainz qualified 16th and finished 12th as Williams never got into a points fight, and he said the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya remains one of the best tracks for revealing a car’s true level.

Speaking after the weekend, Carlos Sainz of Williams said the scale of the deficit was hard to ignore. “Looking back at it, I think it's been a bit more of a shock of how far we are in medium and high-speed corners [behind], partly due to weight, but even more important, the downforce that we have in the car,” he said.

That shortfall was visible in the numbers as well as the result. Sainz said Williams was “anything between 1.6 and 1.9 seconds from the leaders” in Barcelona and “almost six or seven tenths from the first midfield car,” which he identified as the team’s real target.

For Sainz, the problem did not begin in Spain. He said Williams spent the opening phase of the season recovering from a difficult winter in which the car started nearly 30 kilograms overweight, forcing the team to devote time and resources to basic fixes before it could fully chase performance.

That is why Barcelona felt less like a surprise than a confirmation. Sainz said the team already knew this type of circuit would be painful, but the weekend underlined that the FW48 is still well short of its intended standard. “It’s time to go back to the drawing board and start bringing more things to the car, because clearly in a medium speed track we are very far [behind],” he said.

He still believes the picture can improve as the season develops. Sainz said Williams should be “a much better Williams” in the final third of the year, once the team has had more time to invest work and resources into correcting the car’s weaknesses.

Even then, he admitted the gap to the front is already so large that regular podium ambitions are unrealistic. Williams’ immediate fight is to close the deficit on tracks like Barcelona and drag the FW48 back toward the front of the midfield later in the season.