Under fire Carlos Sainz gets the backing of James Vowles

Carlos Sainz has the backing of his boss James Vowles, even though the driver has not had the start to the season that he would have expected. The Spaniard was dealt a massive jolt last season in January when it was announced that Lewis Hamilton would be replacing him at Ferrari.

Sainz decided to find a new home and zeroed in on James Vowles, who was quite vocal about what the Spaniard could bring to the team. For the 2025 F1 season, however, the start has not been as good as Sainz would have hoped.

The driver has struggled to get close enough to teammate Alex Albon to make things competitive. In the first three race weekends, Carlos Sainz has been outpaced in all qualifying and all races.

With the driver admittedly yet to fully adapt to the car, questions have been raised on his selection. James Vowles, however, has come out in support of his driver. Explaining how Sainz's impact has not only been in what he's done in the car but also in what he's doing with the engineering team, he said, via formula1.com:

“I think we’re getting more than I paid for [from Sainz]. The reason why I say that is because there’s two different ways to assess performance – number one is obviously what you see in the car, driving around."

Vowles added:

“But the second element is where I’ve been very impressed; what he’s doing with working with our aerodynamicist team, with our race engineering team, with pretty much everyone throughout our organization on finding those last milliseconds – that’s the reason why I wanted him as part of this team, and he’s delivering absolutely above my expectations.”

Carlos Sainz's boss happy with how the season has begun for the team

Looking back at the start of the season, James Vowles admitted that Williams was happy with how things have panned out. The team has been quite fixated on the 2026 F1 regulations, and the fact that it still has a car with which Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz can score points is a positive. He said, via the aforementioned source:

“[I’m] really pleased [with our start to the season], because this is a really competitive grid now. Gone are the days where there’s large gaps – we’re down into milliseconds."

He added:

“And what I’m really pleased about is that our focus has been on 2026; I’ve been very clear on that, but we’ve still been able to produce a car that’s moved us up to the top end of the midfield and in contention for fighting for points every weekend, which is what our target was going into it."

Carlos Sainz was fortunate enough to score points in the race in China when multiple drivers encountered issues with technical infringements. Other than that, scoring points has been tough, even though teammate Alex Albon has done so in all three events.