Carlos Sainz admitted he had a ‘tough day’ around Shanghai International Circuit suffering ‘balance problems’ on his FW47.
2024 had seen Williams suffer from an overweight car and crashes nearly every weekend. Struggle to make it into the points each weekend. However, 2025 started impressively for the team in Australia. Both drivers made in into Q3 and although Sainz suffered a crash in the race, his teammate Alex Albon finished an impressive P5.
However, the comfort and ease of Sainz was being tested from the practice session in the FW47. He finished the first practice session in 15th 1.6 seconds off the pace of the front runners – a far cry from the top three in Australia.
Struggles in sprint qualifying
When it came to the Chinese sprint qualifying, Sainz suffered similar results. He made it into SQ2 but will line up 13th for the sprint race. Sainz admitted that both sessions were ‘tough’ for the Spaniard, even going as far as to say he doesn’t feel ‘at home in the car’.
“I’ve struggled all day with the balance, and both sessions have been quite tough. In Sprint Quali we had a few issues, including a weird feeling with the seat that we’ll look into, but overall it comes down to me still not feeling at home in the car.”
With only one practice session on a sprint weekend, the drivers are left with very little time to get used to the track and change the setup appropriately. Carlos Sainz noted that after the Sprint race he hopes the data will aid them in feature race preparations.
“I still have to learn and understand many things about it and I know, with more mileage, it will come.” He said. “Hopefully tomorrow we can put everything together and improve today’s result for Sunday.”
“It’s been a difficult weekend up until now, we’re trying to find the balance of the car, it feels quite different here with the wind and, as I said, I’m struggling to find lap time when it comes to qualifying.”
Tyre degradation
Like many other drivers throughout the field, Albon admitted tyre degradation will be a key factor.
He said, “Tyres are not that easy to know what to do with them. I think the tyres have been – we’ve seen it this year so far – very sensitive, and long corners like they are in China tend to make the tyres work a bit harder,”
“It’s hard to get them into a good place so we’ll do some work overnight and try and get back stronger tomorrow. I think graining is going to be a big talking point. The front especially, which is what’s been hard in low fuel as well but in high fuel, it gets out of control.”
Albon discussed how he thought the sprint race would turn out. Deeming it as ‘a bit boring’ in the beginning. He said, “So I think it’s going to be a very managed race. Unfortunately, it might look a bit boring in the first few laps and then you’ll see a bit of a race towards the end.”
With the main qualifying session and race still to come at the Chinese Grand Prix weekend. Williams still has plenty of opportunities.
