Sainz Says Baku Podium With Williams ‘Better Than My First’

• Carlos Sainz celebrated his first podium with Williams, saying it felt “even better” than his career-first in Brazil 2019.
• The Spaniard praised his team for their resilience, calling the result “a life lesson” after a season of bad luck.
• Sainz admitted the podium may be a rare highlight in 2025, with Las Vegas tipped as his next best shot for a top finish.

Carlos Sainz called his third-place finish at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix the most emotional result of his Formula 1 career, even surpassing the joy of his very first podium.

The 31-year-old, who has 28 podiums and four wins across stints with Toro Rosso, McLaren and Ferrari, joined Williams at the start of 2025 after being replaced at Ferrari by Lewis Hamilton. Sunday’s result marked his first top-three finish in Williams colours, and he admitted it carried extra meaning.

“Honestly, I cannot describe how happy I am, how good this feels,” Sainz said. “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 lined up second on the grid after taking advantage of a chaotic qualifying session in Baku. Over the course of 53 laps, he kept his composure to bring home third, losing only one position to George Russell’s Mercedes, which was able to execute a faster alternate strategy.

The Spaniard said the result vindicated the work put in by Williams during a challenging season. “I’m extremely proud of everyone at Williams for pushing through our very difficult year,” he 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.”

With Williams having switched its primary development focus to 2026 earlier this year, Sainz admitted that Baku could stand as his peak result for the season. “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.”