‘Hard graft’ from Sainz is improving Williams form, Vowles says

Williams team principal James Vowles says Carlos Sainz has “really put in the hard graft” to improve his form after joining the team this season.

Sainz was a high-profile signing for Williams during the off-season but after an encouraging pre-season, he crashed behind the safety car in Australia and then struggled relative to teammate Alex Albon in the opening rounds. A clear step forward in the last two events culminated in an eighth place in Saudi Arabia, and Vowles says he has been impressed by Sainz’s approach to the transition from Ferrari.

“He's really put in the hard graft here,” Vowles told SiriusXM. “Great positive attitude from the first kilometer he really drove for the team. But every single race, he's really observing as to, ‘Here's what I'm going to improve, here's what I have to move forward, here's what will help me become comfortable quicker.’

“It could be modifications to seats, discussions, engineering, the screens in front of him. There's a hundred things, all of which where we are improving because they are just making us better. So they're good, positive direction for the team.”

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With Sainz arriving at the end of the current regulation cycle, Vowles says there are areas that he can improve in the short term, but other aspects that are car-related that can only be fully addressed over a longer period of time.

“Really what he's been able to do is say, in a really concise way, ‘Here is the area very specifically that I need to work on. This is what I'll do next race in order to get myself there and it’s how we move forward as a team.’ It's really positive to see how he effectively just processes it, uses data to drive it and move forward.

“There's still elements that we have to improve in the car, some of them baked in. I think it's going to be difficult to get those fixed really in the space of the next six, seven months. Some of them, though, we can still tickle a little bit and that's the direction of travel we're going in.”