Sainz: Final races with Ferrari not my last chance of fighting for wins

Sainz still has three F1 races in Red and will move after that to Williams in the 2025 season, where chances of a podium, let alone a win, will be improbable.

The Spaniard took all of his F1 victories with Ferrari, and while the team suffered from a slump in the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, they have been on a good run of form, winning in Mexico (Carlos Sainz) and Austin (Charles Leclerc).

That means his best chance to take win number five would be in those final three races with Ferrari, the triple header that starts in Las Vegas, followed by Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

Sainz was asked whether he felt a special motivation to win in his remaining race with Ferrari; he responded: "Nothing special, apart from obviously a lot of motivation to try to achieve it.

"Nothing would make me happier than achieving something like that before the end of the year. I'm going to give it my absolute best.

"If it comes, great, and I'll be for sure celebrating. And if it doesn't, I don't believe it will be my last chance of fighting for wins or podiums in Formula 1," he claimed.

Sainz vowed to work with Williams to bring them to a position where he can win races with them; he added: "I'll remain working hard to try to get myself in a position – even if it's with Williams or [in the] future ahead – to put myself in a position to win another race.

"That's what I'm hungry for and that's what I believe I can do, and that's what I've proven that I can do in Ferrari. So, yeah, it doesn't end there."

While Williams have shown signs of improvement in the 2024 F1 season, Sainz insisted that was not the only driving factor behind his decision to join them.

He explained: "On one side, it's very important [to see them performing this year] because obviously during those conversations with James [Vowles], we did talk a lot about this year, how much they were going to improve and which position they were going to be on for 2025.

"And so far, he's been a man of his word and his kind of expectations, which with upgrades in Formula 1, you never know, because you saw it clearly this year that bringing three tenths to the car doesn't always mean three tenths on paper.

"The team seems to be taking their steps in the right direction. At the same time, this news that I was receiving from him and these promises—because they were not promises, they were expectations of the car getting quicker through the season and into next year—didn't affect that much my decision.

"As I said, my decision was a lot more based on the people and the feeling that I was getting from talking to the management, talking to the owners and the feeling that I was getting from the whole organisation, and not so much about the short-term performance gains that they were getting.

"And definitely what convinced me more than the downforce they were going to add or where the team was going to be in six months [or] one [year’s] time, was the people and the professionalism and the vision of the project that they had. This was the main differentiator to me," Sainz concluded.

In his final season with Ferrari, Sainz has won two races, the Australian and the Mexico City Grands Prix.