Williams is hoping for a duel at eye level between Carlos Sainz and Alexander Albon in the coming years – what challenges this will bring
Williams has pulled off a minor coup with the signing of Carlos Sainz. For the first time since Felipe Massa in the 2017 season, the Spaniard will once again be a multiple Grand Prix winner for the traditional racing team from Grove in 2025
“It’s fantastic news, but it will definitely shake us up in a good way,” explains Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance at Williams. He expects that with Sainz and Alexander Albon there will be two drivers on an equal footing in the future.
This has not been the case recently, as Albon usually had both his current team-mate Logan Sargeant and his predecessor Nicholas Latifi clearly under control, and the duel between Latifi and George Russell was also fairly one-sided in 2020 and 2021.
In this context, Robson explains from his own experience that it is “more difficult on the pit wall when two cars are racing directly against each other. There’s no reason to think it’s going to be bad in the end, definitely not.”
“It will be good in the end, but it will definitely be different to what we’ve kind of got used to,” said Robson, going back to 2016 to recall a similar scenario. Back then, Massa and Valtteri Bottas were driving for Williams.
Robson believes Sainz will challenge Williams
He knows “from my early days at Williams, when we had Felipe and Valtteri, or before that at McLaren, that it becomes much more difficult when you have two drivers pushing each other and fighting for the important points positions,” said Robson.
The Briton himself joined Williams for the 2015 season and previously worked for McLaren for more than 14 years, where he experienced the duels between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton or Hamilton and Jenson Button up close, for example.
“I think there are a few things that are going to be a bit scary for us as an engineering team,” he predicts, explaining: ‘I don’t really know [Sainz] as a person, but I know he has a reputation for pushing everyone really, really hard to get everything out of the car. ’
The Spaniard is “demanding”, Robson believes, which is why some people at Williams may have to get out of their comfort zone next year. In any case, 2025 is an important transition year for the team before completely new Formula 1 regulations come into force in 2026.
According to Robson, the learning process next year will mainly consist of “understanding Carlos himself, reworking the team’s dynamics at the track and in the factory and understanding how to deal with two drivers who are in competition with each other. ”
