Carlos Sainz made a major career change earlier this year when he joined Williams from Ferrari. Despite driving for four teams in his career before serving the Grove-based team, Sainz had never driven a Mercedes-powered car.
Even without that, settling into a new team is always a difficult task. But, Sainz’s savior in this regard came in his new teammate Alex Albon, who helped the Spaniard during his early days at Williams.
“He has been the one who has helped me the most so far,” said Sainz to SoyMotor.
Usually in F1, one’s teammate is his biggest enemy. But Sainz revealed that in this regard, they both aren’t ‘evil’ compared to others in the sport.
“We have very similar personalities in that sense. We do not have too much evil inside our competitive brain, and I think that is why we are going to get along well,” said Sainz.
“He has helped me in the Christmas break. We have called each other and asked what we thought about this and what we thought about the team. He has surprised me. You usually do it like this or not, which is something that is difficult to have,” Sainz added.
Sainz’s revelation about Albon’s helpful nature would be a huge boost for Williams. Under the charge of James Vowles, the Grove-based team has announced some ambitious milestones in the coming year. Sainz’s hiring is a part of achieving those objectives, too.
Sainz had multiple offers last year when he announced his departure from Ferrari. Recently, he revealed that McLaren was the reason behind his joining the former F1 powerhouse.
A few years ago, McLaren was also languishing below in the table, far from its former glory, amidst a financial crunch and poor engineering output. However, when Sainz joined, the team made some serious transformations, and within three years of his leaving Woking, McLaren became world champions.
Sainz admitted that leaving McLaren may become a point of regret, but he had a first-hand experience of how teams like Williams can once again reach the top of F1. He claimed that he saw several similarities between Williams and McLaren.
Thus, it made him take the offer from Vowles. The new regulations are indeed a hope for Williams, as often F1 sees a huge reshuffle in all teams’ strength around this point— Mercedes in 2013 and Red Bull in 2022 are the biggest examples.
The biggest selling point of Williams is its strong drivers’ lineup. On top of that, they have made several hirings last year that may help them rise in the future.
