Sainz frustrated by technical issues in first Williams season

Carlos Sainz admits his opening stint at Williams has been anything but smooth, describing the first half of the season as “tough” amid persistent technical problems.

After failing to secure a seat with a top team for 2025, the four-time grand prix winner opted for a midfield project with Williams, but 11 races in, the Spaniard's run of misfortune hit a new low in Austria when a car issue emerged before the formation lap.

“We need to see if there’s any connection between what happened in qualifying and what happened in the race,” Sainz told Spanish media after the grand prix. “A lot of things have been happening to us lately.”

The Austrian setback adds to a growing list of reliability concerns for Sainz, including upshifting issues in Australia, cooling problems in Canada, various failures at his home race in Spain, and now fresh trouble at the Red Bull Ring.

“The truth is that this first half of the year has been a bit tough in that sense because things keep happening to us,” he told DAZN. “At some point all this bad luck will end and things will finally work out for us.”

Sainz confirmed that his teammate Alex Albon has not been spared either, saying: “Yes, we had another problem with Alex. We need to find out why we’re having so many problems in qualifying and the race. We’ve had several weekends of issues - brakes, engines, overheating.

“We’re a bit weak in that regard, but we have no choice but to grit our teeth and see how we can improve.”

Team principal James Vowles has made it clear that Williams is undergoing a long-term rebuild, with the bulk of development energy focused on the major regulation overhaul coming in 2026.

“It’s part of the journey we’re on at Williams,” Sainz acknowledged. “We have to rebuild and restructure the team, which, as we can see, still has many problems and many things to improve.

“We’ll keep trying, keeping our heads down, trying to recover, and learning from what’s going wrong.”

While admitting that the situation is mentally draining, Sainz is doing his best to remain resilient.

“It’s certainly not ideal for a driver’s mentality and motivation to have so many problems,” he said. “But if there’s one problem we’re not having, it’s a lack of speed. We have speed on most weekends.

“It’s still early in the adaptation period. The thing is, speed is useless if you then have problems in the key moments of the weekend, which is what’s happening to us.