New Williams driver Carlos Sainz has admitted that Ferrari’s title hopes have “increased” after Lewis Hamilton replaced him for the F1 2025 season.

Sainz is gearing up for his first season as a Williams driver having agreed a multi-year contract with the Grove-based team from F1 2025.

Carlos Sainz: Ferrari chances have ‘increased’ with Lewis Hamilton arrival

Additional reporting by Sam Cooper

The Spaniard was forced to make way at Ferrari for Hamilton, the most decorated driver in the sport’s history with seven World Championships and 105 race wins to his name, whose shock move from Mercedes was announced a year ago.

Despite being informed that his Ferrari contract would not be extended beyond 2024, Sainz produced the most complete season of his career last year, claiming two victories in Australia and Mexico.

With Hamilton struggling to match Mercedes team-mate George Russell in qualifying conditions in 2024, conceding at the penultimate race in Qatar that he is “not fast anymore”, Ferrari were widely accused of making a mistake by replacing Sainz with the seven-time World Champion.

Eddie Jordan, the former F1 team owner, was among the most vocal critics of the move, claiming Ferrari president John Elkann “must have rocks in his head” to have taken the decision to drop Sainz.

However, Jordan recently performed a surprise U-turn by conceding that Ferrari “have made the right decision for all sorts of reasons, particularly commercial” by signing Hamilton, who turned 40 last month.

Sainz got his first taste of Williams’ F1 2025 car at the launch of the FW47 at Silverstone, the home of F1’s British Grand Prix, last Friday.

And speaking to media including PlanetF1.com after the run, Sainz admitted that Hamilton’s arrival has made Ferrari more likely to win the World Championship, having felt that the team were already on the verge of a title push at the time of his departure.

Asked if Hamilton could bring the title back to Ferrari, he said: “Honestly, I don’t know.

“I’ve never been team-mates with Lewis, so I don’t know what he’s capable of doing. I’ve never seen his data.

“I’ve seen Charles [Leclerc] and I know how good Charles is, but I’ve never been team-mates with Lewis.

“And the only way you can more or less evaluate a driver is when you’re their team-mate and you see what they’re capable of doing.

“When I judge by results and his background and what he’s achieved, I can only say there is a very high chance that obviously he is going to be competitive at Ferrari.

“But like everything, it will all depend on how well you can adapt to a car, how well you can adapt to a team and in which moment your team-mate is in.

“There are so many variables that it is impossible for me to predict.

“I can only say when I left Ferrari, I did feel the team – both Ferrari and Charles – were ready to fight for a World Championship.

“And with Lewis joining, that chance only got increased.”

Sainz’s latest comments come after he admitted to being “hurt” by Ferrari’s decision to sign Hamilton having been in talks to extend his contract with the Scuderia at the time.

Yet he conceded that he “understood” Ferrari’s logic behind signing the most successful driver in F1 history, claiming he would have been left miffed had he been replaced by any other driver.

Appearing on F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast at the end of last year, he said: “I understand [Ferrari’s choice] and I think I understood it almost right from the beginning.

“I think, if it had been someone else, I would have taken a lot longer to understand.

“But when you understand Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion, and one of the best – if not the best – in history, is going to replace you at Ferrari, and Lewis has decided to do the last part of his career in Ferrari, you need to be one of the two drivers sacrificed for that to happen.

“I understand it was never going to be Charles [who was replaced].

“Charles has been the project of Ferrari ever since he’s been a junior driver. He’s been the centre of the project for many years.

“I arrived at Ferrari more as a substitute of [Sebastian] Vettel, almost a bit… not by chance, but circumstantial, rather than Charles who has been there forever.

“So I understood I had to be the one being replaced and I understood it from the beginning.

“I just obviously didn’t agree so much at the time. But you end up agreeing and you end up getting on with it.”

He added: “I think I said on the radio [after winning] in Australia that this life is such a rollercoaster.

“I remember being very emotional on that Australian Grand Prix podium because there was my dad there, there was obviously my manager, my girlfriend and everyone who’s been next to me. I was obviously thinking about my mum and they’ve all seen me suffer during the winter.

“When I say suffer, I don’t mean I was crying behind closed doors, but I was actually hurt. I was hurt because I didn’t expect it. I wasn’t prepared for that kind of news.

“I was a bit in shock for a while. And then I regrouped and got training again.

“But I remember after that win in Australia, thinking about how lucky I am [for] the people that I have around me, supporting me and giving me that inner strength to overcome what was a tough moment at the time.

“[But] now when I look back at it, I’m almost happy, proud that it happened, because it made me a much better driver and a much better athlete in general.

“I could sit here and say: ‘No, I wasn’t angry with anyone.’

“But at the time, when they give you this news, you’re angry.

“You don’t understand it. You curse, you don’t understand anything that has happened to you and, obviously, you think everything in your life is terrible and you don’t understand.

“But then time cures everything and you start to accept certain things and you try to see everything with a lot more of a relative mind and you start to comprehend, adapt and forgive and forget and get on with life.

“Just get on with it. I remember I kept telling myself to just get on with it and just do your thing.

“It is something that you need to see more relative as time goes by.”