Carlos Sainz off the driver market as Spaniard opts for €10mn deal for 2025: Reports

According to reports, Carlos Sainz has decided on his post-Ferrari future and will be joining Williams in the 2025 F1 season. The Spaniard has supposedly signed a €10,000,000 deal, with a special exit clause, with the British team.

Before the 2024 F1 season began, Ferrari announced that they would hire Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton in 2025. They also confirmed that the seven-time world champion would replace Sainz in the process. This forced the Spaniard to look for a new F1 team from 2025.

Because of his impressive on-track performances in 2023 and 2024, several teams like Audi, Mercedes, and Williams reportedly approached Sainz. However, the Spaniard decided to take his time, closely look at every option, and finalize his future in F1.

Since Sainz was the proverbial cork in the bottle of F1's silly season, every other driver and team was waiting for him to make his move.

After several months, reports from F1-insider claim that the Spanish driver has finally chosen Williams as his future team. It is understood that he locked in a €10,000,000 deal with the British team. Sainz could replace a struggling Logan Sargeant, who has yet to score a point in 2024.

According to the report, one of the main reasons why Sainz chose Williams was because of a special exit clause in his contract. This clause allows him to break the contract and leave Williams even before driving for them, especially if a tempting offer arrives from Mercedes and Red Bull.

As of now, however, neither Sainz nor Williams have confirmed anything about their reported partnership.

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James Vowles confident that Williams can hire Carlos Sainz

Williams team boss, James Vowles, recently talked about how confident he is about hiring Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz.

The British outfit joined in the race to get Sainz a few months after Ferrari confirmed that he was being replaced by Lewis Hamilton. According to reports, however, Williams quickly became one of the top teams where the Spaniard could head.

When asked in the media how confident he was of hiring the three-time F1 race winner, Vowles said that he was more than 50% sure of it. The Williams boss also revealed that he and Sainz had long conversations late into the night, discussing the driver's future.

"Out of 100, more than 50%. How's that? How confident am I? I think the odds are in our favor. But I've been stung by this already once this year. So, let's see. It's interesting conversations he and I have had pretty late into a few nights," Vowles said (via Motorsport.com).

As of now, Sainz is driving in his last season with Ferrari. He has won one race with the team this year, the Australian GP, right after his recovery from appendectomy. After the Belgian GP, he stands in fifth place with 162 points in the drivers' championship table.