Carlos Sainz is looking to Williams’ next major upgrade for a lift, but the Spaniard is under no illusion that the FW48’s planned Baku package will suddenly transform the team’s fortunes.
Williams’ 2026 campaign has fallen well short of expectations, with the Grove outfit languishing ninth in the Constructors’ standings on just 11 points.
Neither Sainz nor Alex Albon has added to that tally since Monaco, leaving the team desperately searching for a way to recover some of the competitiveness it showed earlier in the season.
A new chassis upgrade is scheduled to arrive in Azerbaijan. Sainz expects it to make a difference – but only a modest one.
Baku upgrade offers limited hope
Speaking during the Spanish Grand Prix weekend, Sainz admitted the package should at least give Williams a chance of returning to the points battle. But with the team having entered the season expecting considerably more, he sees the upgrade as little more than a step in the right direction.
“Yes, I think that upgrade is going to definitely help us to get ourselves closer to potentially fighting for some points. But realistically speaking, that’s nowhere near where we wanted to be this year, nowhere near what we promised,” he told the media.
“So, it’s still not enough and it’s still not where we want to be. So, it’s an upgrade that will help a bit the motivation of the team and just to look into the weekend with something to look forward to, maybe to potentially get a point or two when we were like we were at the beginning of the year.
“But it’s nowhere near where we want to be and I think our biggest hope is putting all the eggs in next year’s basket.”
That last assessment underlines the scale of Williams’ predicament. The Baku package may offer some short-term encouragement, but Sainz clearly regards 2026 as increasingly about diagnosing what went wrong and ensuring those mistakes do not contaminate the team’s future.
Still a believer in Williams’ recovery
Despite the disappointment, Sainz recently committed his own future to Williams with a multi-year contract extension. That decision, he insists, was not made blindly.
“Yeah, obviously if I signed that contract, it’s because I still believe in the team. I still believe that this is just a bump on the road, on where we are and the capability that this team has to turn it around,” he said.
“I think, honestly, what we’ve learned this year is so many lessons and so many things that we got wrong, or that we believed we were at a certain standard and we are clearly not, that I think this bump that we just hit is going to help the team massively to change fundamental things that we were doing wrong, to become a better team in the future.”
But patience cannot become complacency. Sainz wants Williams to demonstrate quickly that its current struggles are an aberration rather than the beginning of a prolonged slide.
“Having said that, I think it’s extremely important that we bounce back next year because I think it’s very important to make sure this is just a small bump on the road rather than a prolonged time in the year.
Read also: Albon demands Williams progress after 2026 ‘blip’"And also, I think we’ve taken a lot of conclusions, a lot of things that we have to change as a team, and this is going to help us to become a better team in the future.
“It’s been a bigger bump than expected and, for sure, it’s not what we all wanted. But, yeah, I’m hoping that next year we will already look a lot better.”
For now, Baku represents a chance for Williams to show that its lessons are beginning to translate into performance.
Sainz expects the FW48 to improve, but his warning is unmistakable: the next upgrade is not the rescue package Williams had hoped for.
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