In the inscrutable poker-faced world of the Formula 1 driver market, Williams boss James Vowles put his cards on the table and is playing with an open hand.
We’re fast reaching the pointy end of an unpredictable silly season to decide the 2025 grid. Vowles has already convinced the highly rated — and sought-after — Alex Albon to stick with the team beyond the change of rules in 2026, but Logan Sargeant is all but certain to be shown the door.
Vowles is all-in on replacing him with a star signing.
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Carlos Sainz, ousted from Ferrari for Lewis Hamilton and the name preventing the entire driver market from falling into place, would be a signature achievement for Vowles in just his second year at the helm.
“I think we’ve been very open on discussing who’s very much at the top of our list,” he said in Canada.
“It’s now determining what we can do to find a match with, in this circumstance, Carlos, who I think is an incredible driver.
“He’s a race-winning driver. He’s one that last year above all others was able to find his way through [to win a grand prix].
“But it’s his choice as to where he wants to go to. It’s been highlighted that there’s one or two options for him, and we’re very much one of those two.
“I personally think we’re the right option — it’s a good match made together — but the choice remains of course his.”
He’s so determined to close the deal that he doubled down on his high praise several times over the weekend.
“Carlos is an exceptional driver,” he said during a press conference. “Any team would be privileged to have him as a part of their organisation.”
And to Sky Sports: “He’s intelligent how he approaches things, logical, incredibly quick.
“What he did this year in Shanghai — it’s going to sound like a negative, it’s not — in qualifying [was] he crashed, and we’ve all been there to a certain extent, [but] it’s an impressive athlete that can reset themselves, go back out and then beat [their] teammate in that condition.
“I think that shows you just how strong he is as a driver, and I think any team on the grid would be fortunate to have someone like Carlos alongside them.
“The number one target is Carlos.”
It’s a remarkably public and active courtship totally unfamiliar to the normally cagey Formula 1 silly season.
That’s particularly so given the other option on the Spaniard’s desk.
It’s an open secret after years of rumours that Audi had been pursuing Sainz.
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With the frontrunning options closed to him — Andrea Kimi Antonelli is already hotly tipped to take Hamilton’s vacated Mercedes seat — a works drive anywhere on the grid would appear to be the next-best option.
It makes sense on so many levels.
Andreas Seidl, CEO of Audi’s F1 program, was Sainz’s team principal at McLaren and rates him highly.
Carlos Sainz Sr, the two-time rally world champion, won Dakar twice with Audi parent company Volkswagen and his latest triumph with Audi itself.
Audi would also be essentially a job for life. As its first F1 lead driver, Sainz would become an ambassador, and his post-F1 racing career and even competitive retirement would be sorted by signing on the dotted line today.
The connection seemed so strong that most had mentally moved Sainz to Hinwil the moment Ferrari announced he would be ousted.
Perennial minnow Williams could surely be no match for the might of Audi, one of world motorsport’s most prolific winners.
Except that it is, at least in Formula 1.
AUDI IS UNLIKELY TO FIND WINNING EASY
Winning in Formula 1 has never been easy, but the ticket with the best odds of making it to the top used to come stamped with a manufacturer’s logo on it.
The financial firepower of a major auto brand used to mean that teams could rapidly upscale facilities, poach prized staff and hire star drivers, shortcutting their way to the front.
That’s no longer the case in budget-capped F1.
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Today all teams are limited to US$135 million (A$204 million) for all performance-related expenditure. Capital expenditure — money spent on facilities and construction — is also tightly restricted.
That’s a huge impediment to Audi making a competitive debut considering its rock-bottom starting position.
Audi’s decision to take over long-time independent team Sauber seemed sound when the decision was made in early 2022, when it was locked in a tight fight with Alpine and McLaren for fourth in the constructors standings in the first year under new rules. It eventually finished sixth, its best result in a decade.
But Sauber has slid down the order ever since. It slumped to ninth with just 16 points last season. So far this year it’s scoreless and last.
A look at the car performance rankings tells the story.
The below numbers are calculated by taking each team’s fastest qualifying time at each race.
Average deficit to fastest so far in 2024
1. Red Bull Racing: +0.063 seconds
2. Ferrari: +0.335 seconds
3. McLaren: +0.347 seconds
4. Mercedes: +0.504 seconds
5. Aston Martin: +0.720 seconds
6. RB: +0.871 seconds
7. Haas: +1.118 seconds
8. Williams: +1.220 seconds
9. Alpine: +1.359 seconds
10. Sauber: +1.566 seconds
The data looks even worse if you were take an average of just the last five races, with Sauber a whopping 0.483 seconds off the back of the pack as other teams begin leaving it behind.
Audi will be able to turn the ship around, but it will take time — a lot of time.
Consider that Mercedes took over the title-winning — albeit almost totally depleted — Brawn team in 2010 and took until 2014 to become a title winner in an era spending was totally unrestrained.
There are also no guarantees that the dependability of manufacturer backing will turn into results. Just look at Alpine, backed by French auto giant Renault, performing barely better in ninth in the above rankings.
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WILLIAMS HAS ALREADY STARTED THE JOURNEY
Williams in eighth on the above average rankings doesn’t look much more impressive, but it represents the green shoots of its big advantage over Audi.
It’s already started the journey Audi is preparing to embark upon.
Vowles’s arrival in the principal role last year has ushered in a new era at Grove, now backed by investment firm Dorilton.
The former Mercedes strategist has been brutally open about the team’s struggles. Decades of underinvestment had left it with processes and infrastructure in some cases decades out of date, effectively placing a hard ceiling on the car’s performance.
The technology deficit was so significant that several vital procedures to building the car were kept track of in a single Microsoft Excel document — unimaginable in modern motorsport.
Vowles spent the off-season sparking a revolution. It was a mission so arduous the car was late to pre-season testing, but the team’s way of working has been hauled into the 21st century, leaving it significantly better off next season and, crucially, for the rule changes in 2026.
“This isn’t the Williams of old,” he told Sky Sports. “I think first and foremost the fact that we are having Sainz on our list will certainly show you that this isn’t how we’ve performed of late.
“We are prepared to have a driver line-up that I think is going to be one of the best on the grid, if it’s achieved, and that’s a different era that we’re going into.
“We’re investing tens if not hundreds of millions to [take] this team back to where it was in terms of success.
“This really is a good journey where we’re now starting to see the hard work that started 12 months ago come into play, and that gives me every reason to be confident that we’re moving forward.
“This is a different entity to what it was before.”
That’s the long-term outlook, but there are also short-term considerations.
It’s easy for even the best of drivers to get lost in the midfield, and with so many young guns set to join the grid next year, Formula 1 could pass Sainz by rapidly if he’s not in a position to play a leading role.
There’s almost no doubt Williams will be the better team next year, likely competing for Q3 spots and points while Sauber will likely remain welded to the back of the grid.
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IT’S A GAMBLE — BUT WILLIAMS COULD OFFER BETTER ODDS
The delay in Sainz confirming his 2025 plans — and having been rumoured to have broken through several Audi-imposed deadlines in the process — speaks to the difficulty of making what earlier this year had been assumed to be a straightforward decision.
Making life harder is that his next contract will take him into 2026, when the chassis and engine rules change.
“I think 2026 is going to be a lottery,” Sainz said, per Racer. “It looks impossible for me to predict who’s going to be competitive.
“Right now you guys see, maybe with a bit of a dramatic perspective, [me] not being in a competitive car for 2025 or 2026.
“But I think 2026 is going to be such a turnaround that maybe the future holds something really positive out there for me.”
Vowles thinks he’s onto a winner there too thanks to a long-term engine tie-up with Mercedes.
“We’re investing in what it takes to be back in the front,” he told Sky Sports. “In 2026 we have one of the best power units, if not the best power unit, coming to our car.
“We’ll announce shortly, I hope, around about 30 incredible people from other teams joining our organisation that we’ve been gathering across the last 12 months.”
Mercedes dominated the start of the current turbo-hybrid era, and there are rumours — though they can only be that — that Brackley is again ahead of the curve for 2026.
Audi, on the other hand, will be building its F1 motor from scratch. While the 2026 block will be less complex than the current engine, memories of Honda’s dire return to F1 in 2015 must be at the back of Sainz’s mind.
And there are rumours — again, only rumours — that the German giant is behind schedule, with some saying it’s underestimated the challenge of F1.
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Sainz would also have a safer hand to play at Williams. The team needs him more than he needs the team, and he could negotiate exit clauses that would allow him to jump ship if there’s no sign of improvement in 2026.
Audi, however, would presumably require a rock-solid long-term deal to make Sainz its franchise driver. An embarrassing walkout only two years into his deal surely wouldn’t be allowed.
Set to turn 30 years old this September, Sainz doesn’t need immediate success, but nor can he risk trying up what should be his peak years to a project to unknown potential.
“I’m still a firm believer that in Formula 1 to be successful, you need a medium to long-term project,” Sainz said cryptically. “I don’t think you’re ever going to be successful in Formula 1 to go for one year somewhere to win and then leave. I think you need an appropriate project for those things to happen.
“I think 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028 offer me a good opportunity to find that.”
When he sits down to compare contracts, Sainz will likely find that Audi can trump Williams in every way but one. Bizarre though it sounds, Williams — despite having finished 10th in the title standings four times in the last seven years — can offer greater certainty.
“The fact that we’re even talking to Carlos shows you that we’ve changed our approach,” Vowles told Sky Sports, closing a weekend of heavy public lobbying.
“I think you can see all the strengths. It’s easy for me to say because I’m Williams and I wear the shirt.
“I think it’s an easy decision to come here, but it has to be his to make.”