James Vowles publicly named Carlos Sainz as his top driver target to race alongside Alex Albon next year.
Albon signed a new deal last month to continue driving for Williams. He is currently partnered with Logan Sargeant, but the American has struggled to make the grade in Formula 1 and is expected to lose his seat at the end of the year.
Vowles wants and experienced racer to replace him and is gunning for an ambitious hire for his project to get F1's sleeping giants back to the front of the grid. Audi have courted Sainz for months, but in recent weeks the wind has begun to blow in Williams' direction.
And now, for the first time, team principal Vowles has admitted the Spaniard is his preferred choice. "That bit I can say - the number one target is Carlos," he told Sky Sports F1 after practice at the Canadian Grand Prix.
Former Mercedes strategy chief Vowles also explained why Sainz, 29, stands out for him above other potential candidates for Sargeant's seat. He said: "[Sainz] is a race-winning driver who last year, against all odds, beat Max [Verstappen] in Singapore with a brilliant drive - and that's not the first time.
"He's intelligent in how he approaches things, logical, incredibly quick. What he did this year in Shanghai - it's going to sound like a negative, but it's not - in qualifying he crashed but it's an impressive athlete who can reset themselves and then go back out and beat their team-mate in those conditions.
"I think that shows you just how strong he is as a driver. I think any team on the grid would be fortunate to have someone like Carlos." Asked how he plans to sell Williams to Sainz as the best option, compared to the new Audi project, Vowles joked that his "charm and sense of humour" should do the trick.
He then gave a more serious answer and revealed some of his sales pitch. He added: "There's a reason why I left Mercedes to come here. This is not the Williams of old and I think, first and foremost, the fact that we have Sainz on our list shows you that this isn't how we have 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. That's a different era that we're going into. We're investing tens, hundreds of millions into getting this team back to where it was in terms of success."
The driver market has been very active over the last week and Vowles doesn't think it will be slowing down any time soon. He shared his belief that much of the rest of the 2025 grid "will clear itself up in the next four weeks".
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