Struggling Williams must be inspired by Aston Martin’s improvement

Carlos Sainz reckons Williams must be inspired by Aston Martin’s turnaround in qualifying at the Hungarian Grand Prix, as it highlights what’s possible for his struggling Formula 1 squad.

Sainz took 18th at the Hungaroring with team-mate Alex Albon in 19th, marking the fifth consecutive occasion in which Williams has had at least one driver out in Q1.

Although both qualified ahead of Lance Stroll in 20th, Saturday was more positive for the latter’s Aston Martin team-mate Fernando Alonso, who reached Q2 for the first time in 2026 with 16th.

It came after Aston Martin’s first major upgrade of the season with a radically different chassis – an engine update will come next in Zandvoort – to give the squad a much-needed boost.

That’s because the Silverstone outfit had comfortably been until now F1’s slowest outfit, around two seconds off the pace, but the Hungary upgrade showed how quickly situations can change.

So, Sainz has urged Williams to take note ahead of planned updates for Baku in September, which team boss James Vowles previously claimed would be “almost an entirely new car”.

Carlos Sainz, Williams

Photo by: Clive Mason / Getty Images

“As a team, we need to see it in a positive manner, and I want everyone to be positive about it rather than scared,” said Sainz, who is without a point since Canada five rounds ago.

“If anything, for me it just proves that when you understand what your limitations are and you see another Formula 1 team with similar facilities to you, having such a big turnaround and adding so many points of downforce to the car within six months, the courage is there for us to prove to them and ourselves that we can do the same.

“And if we’re not doing the same, why? Why don’t we have that capacity? So for me what is important moving forward is to show that we can also have the capacity to do a turnaround like another midfield team just did in front of us.

“So, Aston went from having a worse downforce, worse chassis than us in Spa, to having the best midfield downforce right now.

“So, it is there for us to go find the solution to add downforce and find the evolution. So I see it positively in a way that the team should be looking at that and saying, ‘yeah it is possible if you do things right’.”

But efficiently delivering updates is easier said than done, particularly because Williams has previously struggled with the production of its 2026 car, leading to it skipping the Barcelona shakedown.

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

So, Sainz thinks “we still need to see” how much of an impact the upgrades in Azerbaijan will have, which Williams hopes will tackle its FW48’s weight problem and general car performance.

Albon isn’t so positive though, as he said: “I don’t know what kind of upgrade that Aston had, I could only dream of that, we could only dream of an upgrade like that.

“Fair play to them. We’re going to be fighting with them in some races purely because of the straight line speed, but I can tell you in the corners they are considerably faster than us.

“It’s eye-opening because also for us, I think we know what our Baku upgrade is, it’s not that, so we have work to do.”

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– The Motorsport.com Team