Williams quashes suggestions of Carlos Sainz running inferior machinery compared to Alex Albon

Williams F1 team principal James Vowles has reiterated that both Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon were running the same chassis for the 2025 season. The Thai driver made a quick start to the 2025 season after it was largely expected that he would play second fiddle to his new teammate, Sainz, for the majority of the year.

However, the Spanish driver has struggled to extract the maximum out of the FW47 in the first two race weekends with the Grove-based outfit. The four-time F1 race winner has only managed to score a solitary point, which came after three drivers were disqualified at the end of the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix.

There have been questions regarding Sainz's sudden loss of pace, with many claiming that both drivers were using different chassis. But in the debrief uploaded on Instagram, Williams F1 team principal James Vowles quashed these claims and gave his honest opinion on the subject.

"Both Alex and Carlos are using exactly the same equipment. It's the same chassis, the same front wings, the same gearboxes. Everything has the same specification as the standard. More specifically, the question is, are we running a 24' chassis with Carlos? Both drivers are running an evolution of last year's chassis," he said.

"So it's evolved exactly the same way but we always intended to go through this sequence regulation, the last year of the regulations, making sure that we are effectively evolving the last year's chassis rather than redesigning from scratch and that's really important. Because it allows us to put our eggs in an investment basket of 2026 and beyond. It's not a financial question. It's time resource," Vowles added.

Alex Albon sits in P6 in the drivers' standings after scoring 16 points from two races and a Sprint while Carlos Sainz opened his account with Williams F1 in Shanghai last weekend.

Carlos Sainz reflects on his difficult start to his Williams journey

Williams F1 driver Carlos Sainz stated that he was "puzzled" by his lack of pace in the 2025 challenger as he believed that the British team was operating at a high level as it executed a great strategy at the Chinese GP.

Speaking with F1.com, the former Ferrari driver reflected on his start to the 2025 season.

“A bit puzzled to be honest, not happy because ever since I jumped in this car I was very quick in testing so I don’t know where the pace has gone for this weekend. At least we have a good 10 days to analyze what went wrong and put together a plan to come back stronger in Japan,” he said.

Despite Carlos Sainz's slow start to the 2025 season, Williams F1 sits in P4 in the constructors' championship with 17 points, level with Ferrari.