Carlos Sainz says many people at Williams would have doubted that he could convert his front-row start into a podium finish before his breakthrough performance at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Sainz started second in Baku and finished third behind runaway winner Max Verstappen and George Russell, who used an alternative strategy to run long and overcut the Williams driver for the runner-up finish. The Spaniard had to absorb pressure for Andrea Kimi Antonelli in the second Mercedes deep into the second stint of the race, but a perfectly judged strategy secured him a place on the rostrum.
Sainz had been confident on Saturday night that he could take home a trophy, but with both Mercedes drivers having been set to start in the top five, both McLaren drivers in the top 10 and both Ferrari drivers in the top 12, he admitted after the race that his view wouldn’t have been shared by everyone at the team.
“Probably if you asked many of us yesterday, we didn’t believe the podium was actually achievable with so many fast cars behind,” he said. “But I think we’ve had good pace this year, we just didn’t have many opportunities to show it.
“I always said to the team from the beginning that whenever a first big opportunity of fighting for a podium comes – as long as we have everything under control and nothing goes wrong and we prove to everyone what we’re doing – and we get that podium, then I’ll be OK. It’s exactly what ended up happening today.
“We had our chance starting from P2. Today we had a very good opportunity to show our very good pace, and we managed to stay on the podium. Only George managed to beat us with very good pace, but it was a very well-executed race.”
The result was only Williams’s fourth podium in the last 10 years and its first podium since the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix, where no racing laps were completed in what was a totally washed-out race. The team’s last podium trophy from a race that went the distance was taken by Lance Stroll at the 2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
While Sainz stood on the podium last November and won the last of his four victories to date last October – both in his final season with Ferrari – the 31-year-old said his first in Williams colors was the most meaningful of his career.
“100 percent this one means even more just because of, obviously, a year ago when I put my bet on Williams and I said I’m going to this team because I truly believe in this project and I truly believe that this team is on the rise,” he said. “I’m very comfortable in this working environment, also very comfortable with everyone around me, and I have actually been pretty fast all year with the car.
“I think out of everyone that’s changed teams – which is not an easy task nowadays – I’ve been very competitive from the first race, very quick, but I didn’t have results with me. I didn’t have results to prove to myself, the team and everyone that some good things were about to come. But in the end they did.
“I think life has taught me many times that this sometimes happens – that you have a run of misfortune or bad performances, but then suddenly life gives you back, if you keep working hard, with something really sweet like this.”