The Azerbaijan GP race weekend commenced with a false sense of predictability: McLaren would almost certainly take home the Formula 1 World Constructors’ Championship with seven races left in the 2025 season, and one of the team’s two drivers would stand on the top step of the podium come Sunday.
The top three would likely resemble most races this season—orange with a dot of Red Bull navy blue, Mercedes teal, or, maybe, Ferrari red. In a similar fashion, the midfield and back of the pack looked set in stone. But then Baku’s winding street circuit did what it does best: wreck havoc.
In a drawn-out qualifying session complete with a record six red flags, the quickest three drivers were anything but predictable. Max Verstappen claimed pole while Carlos Sainz and Liam Lawson sped behind. Any hope for a McLaren starting advantage was squashed when championship leader Oscar Piastri careened into the wall at Turn 3, and Lando Norris fell behind to qualify in just seventh place.
Come Sunday, a chaotic first lap threatened to dominate the race’s storyline. However, it was a streak of blue, holding strong in foreign territory near the front, that demanded viewers’ attention spans. Sainz’s Williams held onto second place for most of the Azerbaijan GP. His third-place finish—the Grove-based team’s first podium since 2021—was just shy of George Russell in second and spelled out precisely what is in store for Williams’ future.
This time last year, Alex Albon snagged his best race result in 2024: seventh place on the streets of Baku. His then-teammate Franco Colapinto followed just behind in eighth. Despite the team’s continued comments about a dazzling future of trophies on the horizon, the points accumulated in Azerbaijan last season were more of a fluke than anything. The team still ended the season in second-to-last place with just 17 points to its name. Albon, for all his flashes of speed, still collected six DNFs and one DNS across 2024.
So when Sainz announced his move to Williams for the 2025 season, the bright future the once-dominant team promised looked a little bit less fuzzy and wishful and more achievable. Then Sainz crashed on the opening lap during the first race of the season. The former Ferrari driver, when compared to his teammate, has underperformed this season, however. Sainz’s average finishing position—counting DNF and DNS performances as 20th place—is 12.58. Albon’s is 10.29.
It was Albon, with more consistent pace and point-scoring performances, who looked like he would stand on a podium step in 2025. Fans took to social media following Sunday’s race to bemoan the unfair result: Sainz on the podium while Albon crossed the checkered flag in 13th place. But even Albon’s staunchest supporters didn’t have much of an argument against Sainz. After all, it’s always good to see an underdog, ousted from a team as iconic as Italy’s prancing horse, come out on top.
“This one means even more just because of, obviously, a year ago when I put my bet on Williams and I said I’m going to this team because I truly believe in this project and I truly believe that this team is on the rise,” the 31-year-old Spanish driver said.
If anyone is intimately familiar with how unfair the world of elite racing is, it is Williams. The team won nine titles in the sport until its winning streak turned into a losing one. One of the last family-owned teams, Williams has historically hemorrhaged money—a death wish against teams with revenue streams like Ferrari, Red Bull, and Mercedes—only exacerbating its performance issues. Williams secured its last podium in Azerbaijan in 2017. The team wouldn’t get another chance as it began to fall in the championship standings the following year. It would stay toward the back of the field for the next seven years.
But among chaos and crashes, the racing gods seem to have finally looked favorably upon the team’s distinct brand of scrappiness: quietly finding success through hard work with a team principal who believes in the team’s potential.
“I think life has taught me many times that this sometimes happens — that you have a run of misfortune or bad performances — but then suddenly life gives you back, if you keep working hard, with something really sweet like this,” Sainz said post-champagne spray.
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Olivia Hicks is a Brooklyn-based sports and environmental journalist specializing in the business, politics and culture behind Formula 1 for NPR and Motorsport.com. Over a race weekend, you can find her reporting live for The Independent. She is The Drive’s F1 correspondent for the 2025 season.
