‘A match made in heaven’ – Vowles hails new recruit Sainz as he explains areas where Williams must improve

Williams Team Principal James Vowles believes that the hard-working nature of both the team and Carlos Sainz makes the union a “match made in heaven”.

Across his 10 years in F1, Sainz has garnered a reputation for working teams hard, extracting the maximum potential from personnel in order to gain the best possible machinery on the track.

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This is a trait he has carried into the early days of his Williams career, but Vowles revealed on Friday at the Australian Grand Prix that the tables have been somewhat turned on the Spaniard in his new surroundings.

“Genuine story, he came to me and said, ‘I normally work the teams hard but can you stop the team working me as hard’ because it’s the other way around,” said Vowles.

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“Williams has many faults; I’ve spoken openly about some of them. But one thing it doesn’t have as a fault is a tremendous amount of passion and the people. There are people in this industry in my company that I am so fortunate to have, that with all their heart, they want this team to be successful again.

“It means that they will work every hour. I have to send them home, not the other way around.

“And the result of that is that Carlos’ work ethic actually works hand-in-hand with what we have. It really is a perfect match made in heaven.”

A stunning lap in FP1 saw Sainz spend a significant portion of the session atop the standings before Lando Norris put in a late effort to deny his former McLaren team mate.

But FP2 saw Sainz and current partner Alex Albon finish 11th and 12th, with the pair setting identical times of 1m 17.302s, to fall 0.863s short of Charles Leclerc.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 14: Carlos Sainz of Spain driving the (55) Williams FW47 Mercedes on — Sainz would finish Friday’s FP2 session in P11

Since his appointment in January 2023, Vowles has not been shy in laying out Williams’ deficiencies.

Explaining areas in which Williams must improve to take the next steps up the order, he added: “What we’re missing is a few things. One, there is still some infrastructure that we’ve absolutely got to get up to the right level.

“Two, there is also a little bit of a lack of knowledge of what current absolute benchmark excellence in F1 looks like, and we have to educate ourselves in that regard.

“But I think what you’re seeing as a result of things is a team that wants to change, it wants to adapt, it wants to get back to winning, and it will work hard towards getting there.”

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