“Obviously a Ferrari had certain car balance, a certain direction that we followed after three or four years of developing that car that required you to brake in a certain manner, turn in a certain manner, release the brake in a certain place, which you fall into a trap of obviously three years of muscle memory of doing everything that way,” he added.
“And when you jump into a different car and especially under pressure, you try and find the last two tenths of the car, you fall into your muscle memory because that’s the muscle memory that you have from three years.
“It’s not that you need to unlearn them because those traits are actually making me very quick also in other type of corners, but you need to remember in a certain type of corner to not do it.
“That’s why it’s almost impossible to ask anyone to be quick on the first three races with a car when you’re only putting in the first sets of soft tyres and zero kilos of fuel for the first time in those first three races, on a completely different track, completely different conditions, completely different tarmacs, and you’re having to relearn a lot of these things.”
Despite his problems so far in 2025, Sainz said “I’m not in a bad place.”
Albon has led the way so far for Williams in 2025
“The speed has been there in Australia and Suzuka. In China, I had a bit of an off weekend through many different reasons. But to be honest, in Australia and Suzuka, I think I was pretty quick, especially given that I’m still new to the car.
“To manage to be close or in the same tenth as Alex all the way through qualy, I think it’s a good point to start the season. I just need to make sure now we start doing less mistakes when it comes to executing the weekend and keep improving my speed because obviously I believe the speed is still, we can improve it a little bit, but we are not as far as it seems.
“I feel like we just need to put a full weekend together and it will come.”