It was one of the most notable transfers last year. With persuasive power and ambitious plans, Williams surprisingly lured Carlos Sainz Jr. “Many of my childhood heroes have raced here.” A portrait of a Spanish crowd favorite.
Carlos Sainz Jr. will never forget his maestra. A star in memory of María de Villota Comba is always emblazoned on his helmet. The Spaniard crashed in 2012 as a test driver in Formula 1 for the Marussia team and died a year later from her injuries. De Villota never managed to follow in the footsteps of her father Emilio de Villota. This Spaniard raced fourteen times in Formula 1 for Brabham, McLaren, and March Engineering between 1976 and 1982. She would have been proud that Carlos Sainz Jr. made his Formula 1 debut on the Melbourne circuit alongside Max Verstappen in the Toro Rosso team in 2015. With a ninth place, he immediately scored his first two World Championship points and for the first time truly stepped out of the shadow of his famous father and mentor Carlos Sainz Sr.
It was María de Villota who took care of the teenage Sainz as a budding professional. She did this as the head of La escuela de pilotos de Emilio de Villota. She was the one who let him get a taste of the big time for the first time at the age of thirteen. He was allowed to drive ten, twenty laps in a race car on the Jerama circuit in Madrid, following De Villota. For Sainz, it felt like the first big steps of a long-cherished dream. A moment he will carry with him forever and for which he will always be grateful to De Villota. Because even after his move from Ferrari to Williams, De Villota’s star continues to shine for Sainz. However, it remains to be seen whether Sainz himself will shine in the FW47 this season.
Justice
The deceased Spanish driver, like Sainz Sr., would have had her reservations about the team switch. Father Sainz stated last December in an interview on the Spanish radio station Cadena Ser that his son ‘has become a victim of injustice’. “I believe that Carlos deserves to drive for a top team. However, that will not be the case this season. There are many good drivers, but the world of F1 is complicated and not always fair. We don’t know what the future holds, but you should never lose courage,” said the four-time Dakar rally champion.”Sainz’s transfer to Williams perhaps caused even more of a stir than Lewis Hamilton‘s move from Mercedes to Ferrari. It was this move that suddenly cost Sainz his seat in the top Italian team. This sensational news was announced on February 1, 2024. It surprised friends and foes alike. And certainly Sainz. A month before he was to start his final season with Ferrari, he announced his forced departure via Instagram. And Sainz did so with a positive undertone. “We still have a long season to go and as always I will give everything for the team and all fans worldwide,” he wrote. In the meantime, Sainz announced that he was looking for a new ‘championship-worthy’ team.
Sainz partly kept his word. He had his best season ever, with victories in Australia and Mexico. With this, he achieved just as many victories as Hamilton, but the Spaniard stayed two places ahead of the Brit in the final standings with 67 points and finished fifth. It was mainly a moral victory for Sainz whose search for a new employer did not offer him the outcome he had hoped for. Insiders say that Sainz initially counted on a chance at Red Bull or Mercedes. Both teams chose not to go for him for various reasons.
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner announced in December last year that Sainz could have been a possible replacement for Sergio Pérez, but he didn’t quite fit the profile. The Austrian team preferred a talent from their own stable. For Red Bull, it would mean a loss of face if they were to bring back a former driver from the Red Bull Junior Team at the age of thirty. And so there will be no reunion between Sainz and Verstappen. New Zealander Liam Lawson is the new teammate of the Dutch world champion.
Flirt
There was also no exchange between Ferrari and Mercedes. Austrian team boss Toto Wolff flirted for a few months last season with Verstappen, but when that move proved hopeless, Mercedes followed the same path as Red Bull. Wolff saw nothing in a multi-year commitment with Sainz and chose home-grown talent. The 18-year-old Italian top talent Andrea Kimi Antonelli gets a chance in 2025 as the new teammate of Brit George Russell.
Sainz’s patience quickly ran out. He decided in July last year to opt for Williams Racing for lack of a good alternative. A surprising choice. The British team only kept Stake F1 behind them in the battle for the constructor’s title in 2024 with Alexander Albon, Logan Sargeant, and Franco Colapinto. Certainly not a ‘championship candidate’ then. Sainz admitted in a press release that the driver’s market was ‘very complex for various reasons’. “However, I have full confidence that Williams is the right place for me to continue my career in Formula 1,” he stated. “I am incredibly proud to join such a historic and successful team, where many of my childhood heroes have raced and been able to make their mark on this sport.”
The name Williams primarily evokes memories of a glorious past in which the team won the drivers’ championship seven times and the constructors’ championship nine times. The last world champion from the team founded by Frank Williams was Canadian Jacques Villeneuve in 1997. Sainz’s goal is to bring Williams back to the top. However, the chances of Williams competing for one of the titles with Sainz and Alexander Albon in 2025 seem slim at best. This is the biggest problem with Sainz’s move, according to Spanish Formula 1 expert Oriol Puigdemont. “It’s almost impossible for a demoted driver to prove that he is one of the very best in a mediocre team,” says the sports journalist from the newspaper El País. “Carlos will have to set different goals for himself before 2025. He will have to make a significant contribution to Williams’ revival and hope that they can follow the same path as McLaren.”
A Cushy Start
Sainz is used to having to prove himself over and over again. As the son of a famous rally driver, he has had to meet high expectations from the outside world almost since his birth.
This is the life story of Sainz, who was born as Carlos Sainz Vázquez de Castro in Madrid on September 1, 1994. As the middle child in a family of three children of rally driver Carlos Sainz and Reyes Vázquez de Castro, he had a cushy start in Pozuelo, the wealthiest village in Spain where Cristiano Ronaldo also kept the average income high for many years. Along with his sisters Blanca and Ana, Sainz had a fairly carefree childhood. From a young age, he loved almost all sports, from surfing to football, and was given the freedom to choose what he wanted. However, it was written in the stars that Sainz would follow in his father’s footsteps. But in a different way. Through the world of karting, he became hooked on motorsport from the age of three. When he was about nine, he decided on his preference: the premier class.
As a young boy, Sainz watched almost every Grand Prix in Formula 1 on television with his father, even if they had to get up in the middle of the night to do so. This was the time when Fernando Alonso became world champion twice in a row and made Spain crazy about Formula 1. Sainz then wanted only one thing: to follow in the footsteps of his compatriot. At the age of eleven, he asked his father, “What do I need to do to become like Fernando Alonso?” From that moment on, Sainz put everything into a career in Formula 1, both on and off the karting tracks. For example, he received an education at the British Council School in Madrid, where he learned to speak perfect English among the international elite. This shaped him as a person.
Sports journalist Oriol Puigdemont got to know Sainz at the age of twelve as the talented son of his famous father. He saw how Sainz grew up as a driver on the circuit. “As a teenager, he was naturally in the shadow of his father. They affectionately called him Carletes instead of Carlos,” explains Puigdemont. “You might think that he benefited from his background, but the opposite was true. All the other children wanted to beat him at all costs. They wanted to show that you could go far without money. This meant that Sainz had to try twice as hard to win. His father pointed out to him that he always had to send messages. That he had to prove he was special. For example, by consistently claiming pole position when it rained.”
Debut
As a teenager, Sainz caught the attention of major teams and joined the Red Bull Junior Team in 2010. Five years later, he made his Formula 1 debut, replacing Russian Daniil Kvyat who moved from Toro Rosso to Red Bull. Within the Austrian team, Sainz had to compete with the rising star Charles Leclerc. This was a battle Sainz could not win. Less than a year and a half later, Kvyat became his new teammate after Verstappen took his seat at Red Bull. Sainz never made that move. He moved to the Renault team in 2017, drove for McLaren from 2019, and joined Ferrari in 2021.
He had varying success with each team. His first GP victory in 2022 at the Silverstone circuit was a highlight, while a slide over a loose manhole cover a year later in Las Vegas was a low point. Sainz was never beyond doubt at Ferrari. In the hierarchy, he remained behind Charles Leclerc. His stablemate was simply the darling of team boss Fred Vasseur. Whether rightly or wrongly. In 2024, Sainz showed several times that he was not always inferior to the Monegasque. He has now overshadowed his father. Carletes has become Carlos. But the status of Fernando Alonso is still unassailable in Spain.
It will hurt Sainz that in a season where former teammates and peers like Verstappen, Leclerc, Lando Norris hope to compete for the 2025 world title, he is relegated to the back of the grid. And former world champions like Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso will likely have much better cars at their disposal. Sainz will take it race by race in his Williams with number 55, with the Grand Prix of Madrid in 2026 as a distant point on the horizon. First, he must win the internal battle against Alexander Albon. And always with María de Villota in his thoughts. Because if Sainz has learned one thing from her, it is to cherish every moment in Formula 1. After all, it can all be over in an instant.
Carlos Sainz Jr. received a special farewell gift from Ferrari. He was allowed to add the F1-75 of the Italian racing stable to his impressive collection of cars. Sainz won his first Grand Prix in Formula 1 in this car at the Silverstone circuit in 2022. Upon his departure, Sainz was allowed to take a lap in a Formula 1 car with his father on the private circuit of Fiorano near Maranello. This marked Carlos Sainz Sr.’s debut in a car from the premier class.
