Carlos Sainz contract details: Williams boss quizzed on reported Red Bull, Mercedes clause

Williams team principal James Vowles has said any reports regarding potential exit clauses in the contract of Carlos Sainz at Williams is “speculation, and that is it”.

The current Ferrari driver will be heading to Grove next season on a contract spanning “’25, ’26 and beyond”, and Vowles revealed that wording in particular was chosen by Sainz himself, to reflect the commitment he is placing in the team.

Carlos Sainz contract: ‘Exit clause’ speculation addressed with ‘abundantly clear’ Williams message

A report from Germany had claimed that Sainz’s contract with Williams had contained a special clause within it that meant he would be able to leave his deal with the team before racing with them, if the opportunity to race with Mercedes or Red Bull next season came about – a claim which Vowles was quick to dismiss.

On top of that, the Williams team principal stated that the contents of the deal are limited to those in an extremely limited group, meaning that anything going around online is simply rumour.

“So, there are precisely 10 people in the world that know what the interior of the contract holds. The Carlos camp know and I know what’s inside,” Vowles told media including PlanetF1.com following the announcement.

“So, anything you have read on the internet is speculation – and that is it.

“It was the message, that ”25, ’26 and beyond’ did not come from myself, that came from Carlos. He wanted it to be abundantly clear to all of you, to the world, that he is committed, and this is where he wants to be.”

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With several other teams having been courting the 29-year-old for his signature for next season, Audi and Alpine having been known to have also been in the running, Vowles also revealed his first conversation with the Spaniard came at last season’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as he identified Sainz as his number one target for 2025 – even before Lewis Hamilton decided to make the move to Ferrari.

Given the amount of movement that has taken place in the driver market and the uncertainty surrounding other seats on the grid, Sainz has taken his time in evaluating his options before making the move that he believes is the right one for him at this time in his career.

But even still, the Williams boss explained that, having had hopes earlier in the season of landing the Spanish driver, a “shockingly bad” race at Sainz’s home round set the team back in what has been a “rollercoaster” time – with the reality only setting in when he signed.

“The moment it looked realistic is when his pen hit the paper. How’s that? That’s the only time I thought it looked realistic,” Vowles said.

“I got stung earlier in the year around Barcelona time, I thought we were in a very good state – and that’s on our shoulders, we had a shockingly bad event, and you can’t do that in professional sport.

“But from the perspective of the ups and downs, it’s been a tribulation up and down all the way through from, I would describe it as Monaco onwards, I think is probably the right timeline.

“But it’s been a rollercoaster, that’s for sure – but it hasn’t been a rollercoaster for any more than the driver market has been really up and down.

“There are no teams that have properly been committing or deciding their direction of travel right at the front, and that includes right up until now, last weekend, where there’s still discussions over where does [Sergio] Perez go? What changes there?

“And when you have that instability, it’s completely normal that a driver won’t commit to you until such point as they know what their future holds, and what doors and avenues close.

“That’s my opinion on it. So as I said, until pen hit paper, I wasn’t confident.”

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