No, this decision did not come hastily. Courted by Audi, Williams and Alpine, looking at a cockpit at Red Bull or Mercedes, he explained again and again that there was nothing new to report. Carlos Sainz, it was unmistakable, liked the fact that so much in Formula 1 recently revolved around him. The Spaniard, who will have to give way to Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari next year, wanted to make “the best decision” for his career. That just takes time. He didn’t want to be rushed. It went on like this for months. It seemed increasingly tiring. “Intense months” On Monday afternoon, the 29-year-old finally took to social media and announced that he would be racing for Williams in the future, in 2025, 2026 “and beyond”. “It was an intense few months in which I had to combine racing with a decision about my future,” said Sainz in a 52-second video clip. External content from Instagram In order to display external content, your revocable consent is required. Personal data from third-party platforms (possibly USA) may be processed. Additional Information . Activate external contentHe believes in the progress that Williams has made recently. “I am convinced that this team has all the prerequisites to make history again,” he also said, according to a statement from Williams, the racing team that was nine times constructors’ world champion, but last consistently fought for victories twenty years ago. Devastating external impactThe switch to Williams is above all a rejection of Audi. In Neuburg an der Donau they really wanted to see Sainz as the second driver alongside Nico Hülkenberg at the wheel and apparently lured him with a lot of money, as Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko revealed to the Austrian “Kleine Zeitung” in April: “We are talking to him” said Marko at the time, “but he has a very lucrative offer from Audi that we cannot match or beat.” Even though the three-time Grand Prix winner Sainz may not be considered a future champion, he was the best of the drivers available at short notice Now all that remains for Audi are those helmsmen who have not yet been able to recommend themselves for continued employment in the coming year. These include Logan Sargeant (Williams), Daniel Ricciardo (Racing Bulls) or Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou from the still pointless Audi partner Sauber. But the external impact is more devastating for Audi: Sainz prefers a private team like Williams to the factory project, which is currently the case Clean, took second to last place in the championship. The fact that Sainz now declares that Williams has “all the prerequisites” to be successful in Formula 1 implies that, in his eyes, Audi does not meet these conditions. The scene whispers that the engine from Neuburg for entry in 2026 is very competitive. Ferrari team boss Frédéric Vasseur recently said that competing as a works team would be an invaluable advantage in the first year of the new engine rules. And not like Williams as a customer of Mercedes. “It was right to wait so long.” Anyone who listened to Sainz in Spa-Francorchamps last weekend could easily understand why he decided against Audi. He waited so long to sign “to see how the future develops for the individual teams. Every week that goes by,” he said, confirms him. “Every week something happens to one of the teams. It was exactly right to wait so long.” Sainz was probably targeting Audi in particular. Last week, the project managers Andreas Seidl and Oliver Hoffmann were dismissed. After Audi CEO Markus Duesmann had to leave a while ago and the project stalled due to funds not being released, the new castling probably finally deterred Sainz. Mick Schumacher could now benefit from this. The Mercedes test driver is urgently looking for a regular cockpit for the coming year and with Audi he may now have one more option.More on the topicAnother personnel change became known shortly after Formula 1 said goodbye to the summer break: Industry leader Red Bull is refraining from an early dismissal the weakening Mexican Sergio Pérez. As the Dutch daily newspaper “De Telegraaf” reported on Tuesday, team boss Christian Horner had informed the racing team’s employees that Pérez would continue to drive for Red Bull “despite the recent speculation”. A team spokesman confirmed the report.
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