Williams’ 2026 season was supposed to be the next step in a carefully plotted rebuild. Instead, Carlos Sainz is confronting a reality he never expected, and the Spaniard is no longer hiding how painful the campaign has become.
After finishing fifth in last year’s constructors’ championship and collecting several podiums, Williams entered 2026 believing it could at least remain at the front of the midfield.
Eleven races later, the team has just 11 points, a car that has been overweight from the start and a growing list of uncomfortable questions.
Sainz admitted the scale of the downturn has been difficult to accept.
“No, it wasn’t in my plans or in my expectations,” he told reporters in Hungary.
“I think I’ve been very open and very clear about the fact that I think in 2025 we overdelivered and, if anything, the results were better than what I expected when I signed my Williams contract in 2024.
“The 2025 car was a very good car, a car that was sometimes only three or four tenths off pole position, a car where you could feel that the balance was good.”
The contrast with this season has been stark. Rather than building on that momentum, Williams has slipped backwards under the new regulations.
“Obviously, going into 2026, I expected, if anything, with more time to develop the 2026 car and a new set of regulations, that we could potentially either stay where we were or make a small step forward.
“Yet time has proven to me that it has obviously been the opposite, or the other way around, and that as a team we are further away from the top than we thought we were at the end of 2025.”
Sainz described the campaign as a sobering lesson for the entire organisation.
“It’s definitely been a character-building year for the whole team, a bit of an eye-opener in terms of how much work there is still to do if we even want to consider fighting with a top team in the future,” he explained.
“A lot of things have been learned, a lot of things we’ve realised, and unfortunately it has been a bad year so far.
“We need to conclude and understand why and what happened. I think we have a pretty good understanding by now.”
Despite the bleak assessment, Sainz insists the project is not broken beyond repair.
“The capacity to turn it around is there, but obviously in Formula 1 it takes time. It takes time, effort, budget-cap money and a lot of analysis, and that’s exactly where we are right now,” he insisted.
Team-mate Alex Albon echoed the frustration while praising the response inside the factory.
“We know the weaknesses of the car, we know the directions,” Albon said.
“I think as a team, this year, the work that's being done at the factory, it's the biggest effort I've seen from the team to really fight these genetic DNA problems that this team has.
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“I appreciate it. I think we're doing exactly the right things to get back on track. It's a shame that we're here in the first place, but I do believe we're doing the right thing.”
Williams hopes a major upgrade package in Baku will help, but Albon is cautious.
“If it's cured by Baku? I doubt it. I think a lot of the Baku stuff has happened. That upgrade was planned quite a long time ago,” he said.
“A lot of what we're really, unfortunately, biting into is next year's car. It's making sure next year's car doesn't have these traits - frustrating!”
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