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Carlos Sainz says he is not yet weighing up his Formula 1 future, despite being out of contract with Williams at the end of 2026 and facing a difficult second season with the Grove team.
The Spaniard joined Williams from Ferrari for the 2025 campaign and made an immediate impact, scoring points in 20 races and reaching the podium in Baku and Qatar. This year has been markedly tougher, with Williams beginning the season on the back foot with an overweight and uncompetitive FW48.
Asked whether he was already assessing rival seats, Sainz was firm: âNot really. Iâm not, seriously. Iâm not because I have so much work to do here in Williams right now.â
That work, he explained, includes simulator sessions, meetings and a wider internal effort to understand where performance has been lost. Sainz has told his management to give him space until the summer break, when he expects to properly review his options.
Williams is preparing a sequence of updates that could prove decisive in shaping Sainzâs thinking. Team principal James Vowles has said a medium-sized update is due at the British Grand Prix, with further changes planned for Spa, Budapest and Zandvoort. By Baku, Vowles expects the team to have what he described as almost an entirely new car â a development direction explored in more detail in our report on Williamsâ Baku upgrade plan.
For Sainz, the priority remains understanding whether Williams can convert that recovery plan into tangible progress. He said the team knows his intentions and priorities, which remain centred on staying and committing to Williamsâ long-term ambition of returning to race-winning form. But he also acknowledged there is a lot of work still required.
âIâm trying to go deep into the root of the causes together with JV, all the management, and everyone involved to see where things started to go wrong,â Sainz said. He added that the focus is now on how quickly changes begin to pay off and how aggressively Williams responds to its current setback.
Sainz has asked for as little noise as possible around contracts and potential moves until the summer break. His ideal scenario, he insists, is to help Williams move forward quickly and continue with the project long term.
Still, the wider driver market could become fluid. The futures of Max Verstappen and Fernando Alonso are described as key factors, while contracts are also due to expire at Audi, Racing Bulls and Haas. For now, however, Sainzâs message is clear: Williamsâ performance trajectory comes first.
Heâs a software engineer with a deep passion for Formula 1 and motorsport. He co-founded Formula Live Pulse to make live telemetry and race insights accessible, visual, and easy to follow.