Inside Carlos Sainz's emotional Baku team radio with Williams race engineer

After his first Williams podium in Baku, Carlos Sainz hailed race engineer Gaetan Jego as the hardest worked he's known in F1

Carlos Sainz has claimed his Williams race engineer, Gaetan Jego, is the "hardest worker I've ever worked with in Formula 1", as he shared insight into the duo's emotional team radio exchange following his third-place finish at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

The Spanish driver, who joined Williams at the start of 2025 after being replaced at Ferrari by Lewis Hamilton, secured his first podium finish with the Grove outfit at the Baku City Circuit. During the cooldown lap, Jego was overcome with emotion. “You sound a bit emotional, are you OK?” Sainz asked him over the team radio, at which point team principal James Vowles said, “Yeah, I can confirm he is.”

When asked about the moment, Sainz explained that it was the result of all of the hard work that he and the team had put in coming to fruition.

“It’s been a tough year for both of us," Sainz explained to Formula 1 ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix. "You probably don’t see it from the outside but you cannot imagine the amount of hours we put into the car, into the simulator sessions, into the set-up development, into making that car go quicker.

"He’s an incredibly hardworking guy, probably the hardest worker I’ve ever worked with in Formula 1 – and I’ve worked with a lot of people. I tell you, no one puts more hours than him into this sport and into this life.

Carlos Sainz, Williams

Photo by: James Sutton / LAT Images via Getty Images

“So not being able to capitalise on results with all the work that we were putting was feeling incredibly frustrating for both of us, and we were both starting to feel it.

"And then suddenly to come back with a podium and a weekend like that, I think it’s probably caught him in the end. It was good to see. I like it because it means it matters for him as much as it matters to me. And I like working with people that are hard workers and what we do matters [to them] and I could tell it mattered.”

The podium finish in Baku saw Sainz move from 18th to 12th in the drivers' standings.