Carlos Size says he was left bewildered by one of the biggest shakings of his career, from the beginning of his time at Williams to the Chinese Grand Prix.
Williams enjoys a strong start to 2025, with Alex Albon taking fifth and seventh in the opening two rounds, helping the team match their 2024 points total already. However, Sainz says he has no idea where his performance went during the preseason despite failing to match his teammates in Shanghai and being promoted to 10th due to a post-race disqualification.
“Unfortunately, at the pace of the car, we made it right with strategy. We were just not there,” Size said. “We’re struggling with a lot of things again with the front tires. We saved a lot of fuel throughout the race, which obviously didn’t help the front so it didn’t look like we’re having the pace.
“To be honest, I’m a bit confused. I’m not happy. I’ve been testing very quickly since I jumped into this car, but I don’t know where all of that pace went this weekend. At least there’s a good 10 days to analyze what went wrong and put together a plan to go back strongly in Japan.”
Size says he felt he had a conflict with the Alcon and had a pace to get closer to the possibilities of the car since moving to Williams, but he struggled since crashing early in the opening race.
“Even at the beginning of Australia, it was one of the strangest performance shakings I’ve had in my career from the nature and super attitude of Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, and the pace suddenly seemed to have left me.
“We made a lot of setup changes on my side of the garage that were very similar to what Alex actually did, and on his side he seemed to respond well to the front greining, and he got much stronger.
Despite reports in Spain, Sainz was running older specifications of the chassis compared to the Albon, Racer understands that both drivers have Williams’ latest monocoque, and the team redesigned last year this season.
As a result, Williams also has a spare chassis, unlike last season. So Sainz has the option of using a chassis that raced in Shanghai in the next round of Suzuka and another chassis.