Williams director is loving the enormous Carlos Sainz effect he’s seen at F1 fan events in 2025

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Carlos Sainz has endured a relatively tough start to his F1 career with Williams Racing in the first half of the 2025 season, but it hasn’t all been doom and gloom for the Spanish driver.

Carlos Sainz signed for Williams following the shock announcement at the start of 2024 that Lewis Hamilton would partner Charles Leclerc at Ferrari in 2025.

It was an interesting choice from the Spaniard, who had interest from several teams on the grid, with Guenther Steiner thinking Sainz should have taken the Audi offer instead.

As part of a midfield outfit this season, Sainz admitted that he misses competing for pole positions on Grand Prix weekends like he was able to do with Ferrari.

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Carlos Sainz’s image has brought an unexpected increase in F1 fan engagement with Williams

The 30-year-old has scored 13 points so far in 2025 and is ranked 15th in the standings, with teammate Alex Albon rounding out the best of the rest in seventh place with 46 points.

However, Williams are aware of the impact Sainz brings to the team away from the track. Speaking to Motorsport.com NL, the team’s sporting director, Sven Smeets, highlighted his impact on the commercial side of things.

“In Madrid, we did a demo with Carlos. They expected 5,000 to 7,000 visitors, but it turned out to be 25,000. It was our best day ever in terms of merchandise sales, second only to one.”

The support at Grands Prix from Carlos Sainz fans has also been a difference for the team, with Smeets noting, “If you look at the attendance figures we achieved this year in Australia, Miami, Barcelona, and London, they’ve become serious, standalone events.”

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Carlos Sainz needs a better second half of the season to save it from becoming one of his worst in F1

If Sainz continues on his current trajectory in the current season, the 2025 season could turn out to be the worst for the Williams driver since his debut season in 2015 with Toro Rosso.

This hasn’t been helped by the Spaniard’s two DNFs in Australia and Bahrain as well as his DNS in Austria, to which Sainz said he was ‘partly’ to blame for the nightmare of a weekend.

He now has 12 Grand Prix weekends to score some good points for the team, who are currently in danger of slipping down the constructors’ standings due to an accelerating Sauber team in sixth place.

The upcoming Belgian Grand Prix could prove to be the race for Sainz to turn it around. The Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps rewards teams whose strengths lie in straight line speed, something that Williams have been one of the best on the grid at for a number of years.