Williams driver Carlos Sainz said his third-place finish at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix felt even better than the first podium result of his career.
The 31-year-old has scored 28 podiums over 11 seasons in F1 — including four wins as a Ferrari driver — with the first coming at the 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix while racing at McLaren.
He joined Williams at the start of this season after he was replaced at Ferrari by Lewis Hamilton, and said his first podium with his new team came with an overwhelming sense of emotion.
“Honestly, I cannot describe how happy I am, how good this feels.” Sainz said after Sunday’s race. “This is even better than my first ever podium that I did.
“We’ve been fighting hard all year and finally today, we just proved that when we have the speed — we’ve had it all year — and everything comes together, we can do some amazing things together.
“And yeah, today we nailed the race. Not one mistake, and we managed to beat a lot of cars that yesterday I wasn’t expecting to beat.”
Sainz started from second on the grid after capitalizing on a chaotic qualifying session at the Baku street circuit on Saturday.
He maintained a strong level of performance throughout the 53-lap race, losing just one position to George Russell’s Mercedes, which proved faster using an alternative strategy.
– McLaren’s Stella: Even Schumacher made mistakes like Piastri
“I’m extremely proud of everyone at Williams for pushing through our very difficult year,” Sainz said. “I think we’ve proven to everyone the massive step that we took compared to last year.
“We are on the rise; we are in the right direction. Unfortunately, with me, we’ve had a lot of bad luck, a lot of incidents – very difficult to convert all that pace into results. But now I understand why it all happened, because the first podium needed to come like this. It’s just life, you know?
“Life just sometimes brings you those bad moments to give you a very nice one, and this stays much better than any other thing that I was expecting. So, just a life lesson, to keep believing, keep trusting yourself, your team around you, your procedures, everything that you’re doing – because sooner or later, it always pays off.”
After Williams switched its focus to 2026 early in the season, Sainz expects the Baku podium to be the high point from his debut year with the team.
“I think the podium is – unless something crazy happens — maybe our best chance,” he said. “Probably Vegas will be our next best track to try and maybe put together a top five or a top six, which is what we sometimes can achieve when everything goes right. Apologies, it’s a tough ask.
“I’ll fight for it if it comes, like you’ve seen today. But the rest, for example in Qatar, I don’t think we will score points.
“That’s how much our performance swings. But then we will have the Austins, the Mexicos. We will be a pure midfield car where we can maybe get in the points and keep our championship going. So excited to see what happens in those races.”
