Carlos Sainz beat Lewis Hamilton to an F1 podium finish in 2025 on a memorable day for Williams in Azerbaijan.
After a terrific qualifying performance, Sainz lined up second on the grid alongside pole-sitter and eventual race winner Max Verstappen in Baku.
While Mercedes cleverly opted to go long on their one-stop strategy for George Russell, resulting in the Brit finishing in second place, Sainz held off the challenge of Kimi Antonelli in the other Mercedes to finish third – Williams’ first podium in more than four years.
Having lost his seat at Ferrari this year to Hamilton – who is yet to pick up a top-three finish for the Scuderia and finished eighth on Sunday – Sainz was elated to pick up just Williams’ second podium since 2017.
“I cannot describe how happy I am, how good this feels. This is even better than my first ever podium that I did,” Sainz said.
“We’ve been fighting hard all year and finally today, we just proved that when we have the speed — we’ve had it all year — and everything comes together, we can do some amazing things together.
Sainz, a four-time race winner with Ferrari, almost doubled his points tally for the entire season after a mixed start since his move from the Scuderia. The Spaniard said the podium underlines the progress of James Vowles’ team.
“We are on the rise; we are in the right direction,” he added.
“Unfortunately, with me, we’ve had a lot of bad luck, a lot of incidents — very difficult to convert all that pace into results.
“But now I understand why it all happened, because the first podium needed to come like this.
“It’s just life, you know? Life just sometimes brings you those bad moments to give you a very nice one.”
Alex Albon, who is still 39 points ahead of teammate Sainz, finished 13th after a tough weekend in Baku.
F1 next heads to the Marina Bay Street Circuit under the lights for the Singapore Grand Prix (3-5 October).