Carlos Sainz: Williams has recovered lost Barcelona time, but FW48 still has “quite a few” limits

February 19, 2026

Williams Formula 1 driver Carlos Sainz believes that the Grove outfit has recovered from missing the Barcelona shakedown in January, but warns that there is still a lot of areas for improvement on the FW48.

Private testing was held in Barcelona from 26-30 January, but Williams was forced to skip it due to delays in the FW48’s development. Now that it is halfway through the second week of pre-season testing in Bahrain, Sainz believes that the team has done what it can to recover the lost time, but they have found “quite a few” limitations on the car.

“As far as testing goes, I think what we needed over the last few days, which was to recover the time lost in Barcelona by adding a lot of mileage to the car, I think we’ve managed to do that well, and the car is running reliably from the beginning,” the Spanish driver explained during a press conference in Bahrain.

“That’s allowing us to find out the limitations and the areas where we have to improve, which, unfortunately, there are quite a few. But as I said, the main thing last week was mileage, and then this week we are finally starting to try and find a bit of lap time and performance out of it and try to put it in a better set-up window.”

Carlos Sainz, Williams

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

When pressed on what he means by getting the car in a better set-up window, he added: “I mean, probably just what it means being a bit behind schedule of missing testing. It means you probably cannot find the first things out on Barcelona, where to put the car and then you’re a bit of a step behind in terms of set-up understanding.

“But last week the conditions were really tricky for everyone. I think it was really, really windy every day. This week suddenly the wind has calmed down and I think it’s much more normal conditions.

“And the cars, I think, for everyone are a lot more predictable, a lot better to drive. But we’ve also done some set-up adjustments to adapt the car set-up a bit more to these regulations and it seems like it’s going in the right direction.”