If Sainz joins Alpine, who is Williams' best F1 option for 2025?

The Carlos Sainz transfer telenovela continues to deliver further twists, the kind that only a soap opera can deliver seconds before the "doof doof" feeds into the final credits at the end of a hackneyed half-hour of stilted conversation. So, where were we?

At the end of the last episode, Sainz continued to pore over two clear offers: one from Sauber, one from Williams. There's a knock at the door, and the camera follows the Spaniard twisting the handle. The director, containing the surprise for a second longer, switches to a shot of him standing on the doorstep and a barely audible gasp breaks from his countenance. Flavio Briatore stands there, offer in hand, hoping to whisk him away from under the noses of the other teams and bring him to Alpine.

The Alpine offer has complicated an apparent straight fight between two teams struggling to make a splash in the 2024 driver market. One stands upon the brink of its metamorphosis into Audi, becoming a full works entity for one of Germany's most iconic manufacturers, as the other attempts to break from its decline under James Vowles' detail-oriented stewardship as a customer Mercedes team.

It was said that, of the two, Williams was the more likely contender; Vowles wanted Sainz to bring his significant driving talents and knowledge accrued from four years at Ferrari to help the team move forward. Now? Alpine has presented enough to delay Sainz's decision, understood to be helped by Briatore's immediate impact on the team and its plans for 2026.

PLUS: The one certainty that Alpine gets from Briatore's F1 return

The team has not publicly commented on the understanding that it could mothball the Renault 2026 powertrain project and switch to customer status, with it believed that Briatore has urged the team to pay for Mercedes power. But this is a significant gambit in luring Sainz back to the Enstone team he left at the end of 2018.

Thus, Sainz is going to keep his suitors hanging on a little longer. Williams, who was thought to be the favourite to secure his services up until last week, is understandably getting itchy feet. Sainz remains atop the British squad's shortlist but, in the event he decides that Alpine is the way forward, it has reopened talks with other drivers to hedge its bets.

A rookie driver is out of the question for Williams right now

Photo by: Williams

To demonstrate the vision that Vowles has for the team, Williams wants a driver with experience and, ideally, a grand prix win to add lustre. The Logan Sargeant experiment hasn't really worked.

Since the effort required to get him his superlicence points over 2022, the American has dialled down his wall-bothering exploits but has not found the speed needed to even occasionally get on level terms with team-mate Alex Albon. The Anglo-Thai driver has been on lead guitar for two-and-a-half seasons, and now needs a drummer who can set a faster, more consistent tempo.

A rookie is out of the question at this stage. Williams boasts a wealth of young stars, including Franco Colapinto, Zak O'Sullivan, and F3 championship leader Luke Browning, but it might feel that the trio needs a little longer before it deems them F1-ready.

It seems that, in pure pace terms, Bottas is genuinely under-valued by the team as it has been open about seeking a new driver

There are two serious options behind Sainz: Valtteri Bottas and Esteban Ocon. The Finn and the Frenchman are currently free agents for 2025, and both satisfy the criterion of having race wins to their name.

For Bottas, a potential Williams seat would be something of a homecoming. He started out his career with the squad in 2013, making the leap directly from GP3 via a reserve role, and immediately proved to be a stable and consistent performer in that opening year. And, when Williams took an upturn in performance under Pat Symonds' hand at the technical tiller, he had the machinery to challenge for podiums across his next three years at the team.

When Nico Rosberg retired, Bottas left Williams to join Mercedes as Lewis Hamilton's team-mate, where he proved to be the ideal rear-gunner to the Briton during his years of championship dominance. The weekends where he matched or outperformed Hamilton were more than just occasional; across his five seasons as Hamilton's team-mate, Bottas lagged by just 0.116% across their overall supertime metrics. On average, Bottas would usually finish 11.02s behind Hamilton in races, accounting for less than 0.2s per lap in an average 60-lap affair.

Whether Bottas still has that level of performance in him remains to be seen, as Sauber has regressed considerably of late. Although the perception is that Bottas has been somewhat closely matched by Zhou Guanyu in their 2.5 years as team-mates at the Swiss outfit, their supertime difference across that period stands at 0.45%. Zhou is undoubtedly a very solid driver, but Bottas has simply been quicker by some margin overall in their time together.

Bottas has past form with Williams, the team where he began his career before switching to Mercedes

Photo by: Williams F1

If one makes the assumption that Zhou's performance level is a little higher than Sargeant's, and note the difference between Sargeant and Albon (in supertimes, that's 0.774%), then that places Bottas somewhere approaching, if not north of, Albon's level. The points tables don't necessarily reflect that, as Sauber has fallen into a state of ennui and flux as Audi concentrates its investment into starting 2026 in swaggering fashion. It seems that, in pure pace terms, Bottas is genuinely under-valued by the team as it has been open about seeking a new driver.

Ocon is also understood to be an option, although the Alpine driver is currently being pursued by Haas to partner Ollie Bearman for 2025. Relative to team-mate Pierre Gasly, Ocon trails by a scant 0.066% in the supertime metrics across 2023 and 2024, and last season was just 0.007s shy of his team-mate across their average qualifying gaps. The two are much of a muchness, with an infinitesimally small swing towards Gasly over one lap.

Should Williams opt for Ocon, it would be able to harness a driver whose early years were defined by supreme consistency in races, a reputation that has perhaps faded in his time at Renault/Alpine thanks to its iffy reliability and current downturn in performance. There are also the dents produced by his adversarial relationship with Gasly, which has perhaps contributed to his exit from Alpine.

His Portier assault at this year's Monaco Grand Prix, which would likely have put both drivers out had the red flag not emerged, was the straw that broke the camel's back. Vowles would need to impress upon Ocon the need to avoid such flare-ups with Albon. Thankfully, the two do not have a decade-plus history of resentment (at least, to our knowledge) and thus should prove relatively harmonious.

And Vowles knows them both well. He worked with Bottas as Mercedes' chief strategist and infamously detailed team orders to Bottas with the apologetic preface of "Valtteri, it's James", a phrase that entered F1 memedom thereafter.

But he's also worked with Ocon during his involvement with the Mercedes junior team, and thus has an idea of what makes the two drivers tick. Personality is going to be a key factor, as building a relationship with Albon is necessary to keep the team moving forward. And then there's that race-winning know-how; the implicit knowledge of what to do when the car is out front should the team progress to that level.

Comparing Bottas directly to Ocon is difficult, given they're driving very different machinery, but the supertimes can be used to determine if a driver is driving to the maximum potential of the car. Taking a team's supertimes over the past three seasons and subtracting them from the drivers' average supertimes over the same period of time should yield a percentage of how close the driver is to its ultimate pace.

Ocon would need to clean up his act if Williams comes knocking

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Ocon falls on average 0.287% behind the ultimate Alpine supertimes across that three-year spread. As for Bottas, he is just 0.099% shy of Alfa Romeo/Sauber's pace. This is skewed slightly by Bottas' position as defacto team leader, while Ocon was up against Fernando Alonso and Gasly in the same period, but it does suggest that the Finn is more often hitting his head on the Sauber ceiling.

It entirely depends what Williams is looking for in a driver. Bottas arguably has the stronger link to Vowles and, if he can resume their working relationship by picking up the form he showed at Mercedes, he might be the stronger bet.

But Ocon has his merits beyond his latent pace, and is brimming with desire to win again in F1. He might be able to light a fire under the team as it seeks to break out of its current lowly position in the teams' pecking order.

Bottas arguably has the stronger link to Vowles and, if he can resume their working relationship by picking up the form he showed at Mercedes, he might be the stronger bet

The margins are paper-thin; Bottas has a veneer of being the more likely option of the two, but Ocon would be an equally strong proposition as Williams continues to grow in strength. Sainz could still elect to join Williams, rendering this entire column moot, but the Alpine proposition is understood to be alluring.

Wildcard options? There's a few. Andrea Kimi Antonelli has a non-zero chance of being seconded to the team if he doesn't get the Mercedes gig. Colapinto has been granted an FP1 drive for Silverstone, and seeks to follow fellow Argentine Carlos Reutemann's footsteps as a Williams F1 driver.

And if we're really rummaging around, how about a completely improbable option? There's a recently retired German world champion currently flirting with the idea of a racing comeback...

Could Williams tempt back Vettel?

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images