Sainz: I plan my actions six months in advance.

      Carlos Sainz insists he made the right choice in joining Williams and believes in the team, but while team principal James Vowles and Alex Albon talk about plans to take it to championship level by 2028, the Spanish driver is thinking in somewhat different terms. He is interested in nearer prospects.

      "I prefer to think about more immediate matters and plan my actions six months ahead," Sainz told Motorsport Week. "I like to think in six-month terms, and right now we're deciding what the car should be like in 2026. We also have six months to understand how to improve the race crew’s work, what to do so the team operates more effectively.

      If next year’s car allows us to fight for better results than the FW47, then we must ensure that on race weekends we don’t make the kinds of mistakes we’ve made this year. In general, in Formula 1 I’m always focused on the next six months, because in that timeframe I can influence the situation as a driver.

      In the simulator we can work on solutions targeted at the next six months, we can develop the team’s strategy, and think about how we will act on race weekends six months from now. I always try to anticipate the level we will want to reach in six months and try to influence that the most.

      My task, as always, is to assess how effectively Williams is developing the car and what car we will have at the start of next season. I will be able to set my own goals depending on how the car shows itself in the first race of the season. That’s exactly how we acted this year in Australia.

      I think it’s too early to guess whether we’ll be able to create a good car or whether our rivals will do a better job. The new technical regulations are very different from the current ones, and they have nothing to do with what happened this year, so we don’t know who will be behind in 2026.

      That’s still far off, and right now I’m more concerned with how, by working on the simulator, I can already help Mercedes’ engineers create quality software for next year’s car… All these efforts will pay off in six months."