Sainz needs to deliver in the second half, says Williams’ Vowles

Williams team principal James Vowles says the target for the second half of the Formula 1 season with Carlos Sainz is to turn demonstrated potential into results.

Sainz joined Williams from Ferrari ahead of the 2025 season, marking a significant addition as a four-time race winner alongside Alex Albon. While Albon has scored 46 points in the opening 12 rounds, Sainz has just 13 to his name after multiple missed opportunities, and Vowles says it has been a combination of both team and driver failings that have impacted his points tally.

“With Carlos, I think we haven't delivered everything we can with him this year,” Vowles said. “And it's been a mixture all across the board. There's been errors that he's made on track. There's absolutely been the errors that we've made on track. There's been accidents. There's been just accumulation of aspects.

“For me, it's about drawing a line in the sand and moving forward from Spa onwards. We have a number of really good races coming up for us. It's about delivering the result that the car has in it, making sure that we start to really focus in on why we're not getting everything out of qualifying and dig into that and get the best performance possible.

“For Carlos, it's achieving the results that I know we are capable of together, which we haven't done this year.”

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While crediting Albon’s performances, Vowles says the team needs to maximize the opportunities they've provided.

“In the case of Alex, it's building on what we did at the beginning of the year and making sure we recognize we've fallen back a little bit, but move forward with the car performance and make sure we start to extract everything out of qualifying that we can," he said, "allowing him to continue that point score tally that he's built up so well across the first half of the season.

“We’re now about midway and obviously had a very strong start and have then fallen away a little bit as others have added performance to their car. Now, we have a small update coming to Spa. What we really have to do there is make sure that we capitalize on the car performance that we have available to us. There’s still points that we can score from here to the end of the year; it’s making sure that we execute the weekends and take every opportunity that comes towards us.”