Williams reveal when they made first approach to sign Carlos Sainz

Williams team principal James Vowles has revealed he first approached Carlos Sainz about potentially joining his outfit at the 2023 F1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

The team announced on Monday that Sainz would join them on a multi-year deal from 2025 following Ferrari’s decision to replace the Spaniard with outgoing Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton.

Sainz had been weighing up his options in recent months but eventually choose Williams over the likes of Sauber/Audi and Alpine.

Speaking in a virtual media call with media including Crash.net on Tuesday, Vowles explained that first contact with Sainz was made before it was announced he would be leaving Ferrari.

"The conversation has been many months," Vowles said.  

"It hasn't been weeks, of which you've been privy to some of it because it's been a bit more public than I would normally do with a driver discussion, but it actually started way back in Abu Dhabi last year."

Vowles insisted Sainz, who he described as “one of the top four drivers – if not at times the number two driver on the grid”, was always Williams’ number one target.  

"There's only one driver I spoke to in Abu Dhabi last year, only one, and it was Carlos, just to be super clear,” he said. “I didn't spread bet. I went for one driver that I thought would make the difference."

Vowles had been hopeful that Williams’ rise to seventh in the F1 constructors’ championship last season would have bolstered their chances of persuading Sainz to join.

However, he admitted a tough start to 2024 with an overweight car initially “stung” Williams.

"I thought, for complete transparency, that we wouldn't have the weight on the car, and you don't know the numbers, but if we would have been in a points-scoring position every weekend, I actually think it would have been a more difficult choice for him [to stay] if Ferrari was more on the rocks, and I didn't know that it would be,” he said.

"My point was to position myself in the most sensible way possible for that. But performance drives everything. If you're in the points you have a lot more phone calls than if you're not.”

Vowles conceded he had “no inkling at all” that Hamilton would make a bombshell switch from Mercedes to Ferrari, describing the move as a “complete shock to me”.

“When Lewis was announced, absolutely no idea,” he added. “I knew Lewis had his heart set there eventually, but I also know the end of that deal, because I was a part of it, and I was knocked off my chair the day that that happened."