“There’s a reason why I left Mercedes to come here,” he commented. “This isn’t the Williams of old, and I think first and foremost the fact that we are having Sainz on our list will certainly show you that this isn’t how we’ve performed of late.
“We are prepared to have a driver line-up that I think is going to be one of the best on the grid, if it’s achieved, and that’s a different era that we’re going into. We’re investing tens if not hundreds of millions to [take] this team back to where it was in terms of success.
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“There is in the background a number of really great signings that will slowly start edging out into the world. But this really is a good journey where we’re now starting to see the hard work that started 12 months ago come into play, and that gives me every reason to be confident that we’re moving forward.
“We were a team that were 10th [in the standings] for many years… Yes, last year we were seventh and we started this year poorly, [but] keep an eye out for us. We’re now starting to put performance to the car race by race, and this is a different entity to what it was before.”
Sainz’s next team will be the fifth he has represented in F1, having debuted with Toro Rosso back in 2015 before stints at Renault, McLaren and, most recently, Ferrari.
