“Of the drivers I have worked with, Carlos Sainz is the best at interacting with the engineers, better than Lewis Hamilton”

James Vowles held a special press conference with the Spanish media. I wanted to explain the situation of Williams after the problems that have hampered the team this season and all the changes that are taking place at the headquarters of Grove and in the way the group works. And in that talk, he highlighted the importance of Carlos Sainz to lead the team’s comeback and overcome this difficult moment.

“Carlos is the best driver I have worked with on the grid when it comes to interacting with the engineers. He is able to understand how to transform what he feels in the car into useful information and, if we have the data in front of us right now, you can locate the specific millisecond of that data that works and then communicate it to the engineers in English,” he said when asked by Carlos Miquel, from Cadena Cope, who wanted to know why Carlos Sainz feels so good in the Grove team.

“And engineers, all of us are a little strange… (laughs) Our communication skills are not exactly the best in the world,” he noted. That’s when MD interrupted Vowles to ask for clarification.

“Better than Lewis Hamilton?” this newspaper asked Vowles, who worked at Mercedes during the Englishman’s success.

“More than Lewis in that regard, yes”he responded without hesitation. And it was explained.

“Lewis can describe the sensations very, very well: ‘I feel this.’ But if you present the data in front of him, he is not able to relate it to the specific point to which it corresponds in that data. Carlos can take that step,” he commented.

“And it’s something really important to understand about him. I think what has happened to Carlos in previous teams is that he was not given the necessary platform or voice to help drive the team forward,” he argued.

“Carlos Sainz knows how to make a team work, but he has not always had that platform from which he could speak openly about how to do it”he added.

“Some places have been better than others, from what he tells me when we talk about his career, but I recognized that strength in him even before he walked through our door. That’s why I created a structure in which the idea was: ‘We are going to empower you as a leader and we are going to give you a voice.’ he explained.

“In terms of driving, you all know that he is fast on the track. He has been that way since the first day he got into a Formula 1 car. That’s not why I hired him here; that was taken for granted. It was simply a box that had to be checked. I hired him because he can change a team from within and make it his own. And I think on other teams he didn’t have the opportunity to develop that way. And here he has taken advantage of it. That’s my opinion, but it’s worth asking him,” he concluded.