Carlos Sainz rounded out his 2024 Formula 1 campaign at Ferrari with one final podium for the Scuderia, which dropped him for the new season in favour of seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton. That, the Spaniard thought, would be his final podium for some time as he moved to Williams, who finished ninth last year.
Ahead of his debut with the Grove outfit, Sainz warned fans that 'you're not going to see me on the podium' over the course of the 2025 season – although this was a promise that he would break before the end of the year.
His first season with Williams and new team-mate Alex Albon got off to a rocky start, with Sainz failing to finish the first lap of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. And while Sainz picked up his first point of the year in China, a tough Japanese race followed and another retirement in Bahrain summed up a rough start to his Williams career.
But Sainz was undeterred, and soon admitted that he was “going in the right direction with the set-up and driving”, after he out-qualified his team-mate for the first time in Saudi Arabia. The Jeddah race also kicked off a strong run for Sainz, as he picked up points in five out of six grands prix - showing off the progress that Williams had made over the winter break.
After this, however, Sainz entered a rough patch in his season as a mechanical failure meant he missed the start in Austria and he failed to finish inside the points at the following five grands prix - except for sixth place in the Spa Sprint.
Results were what the Spaniard needed in the second half of the season as the gap to his team-mate widened, and Sainz soon delivered. In Azerbaijan, he became the only Williams racer to step foot on an F1 podium this year – the first to do so since George Russell in the rain-affected 2021 Belgian GP, and before that it was Lance Stroll at Baku 2017.
His first podium of the year came courtesy of a third-place finish in Baku, where Sainz qualified second and, despite succumbing to Russell, held off a charging Andrea Kimi Antonelli to take third at the flag. This was followed by another third-place finish in the Austin sprint and, to top it off, another third at the penultimate grand prix: Qatar.
It wasn’t all good news, however, as he shared the blame for a race-ending crash with Antonelli in the US GP. There was also an incident with Liam Lawson in Mexico, which ultimately ended his race at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez prematurely.
Despite these moments, Sainz concluded his first season at Williams with 64 championship points – just nine shy of the tally picked up by Albon. He also took the bragging rights as the only driver to add to Williams’ trophy cabinet this year, and outperformed Albon 14-9 in qualifying head-to-heads for grands prix.
Sainz' form over the course of the 2025 season helped Williams to fifth, its best finish since 2017, and could have left some at Ferrari wondering why he was let go.
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