Carlos Sainz gave a clear priority order to a 13-year-old Williams Racing Academy driver preparing for single-seaters: find the limit first, optimize for consistency later. That advice is the right framework for sim racers adapting to any new category or platform.
Will Green, signed to the Williams Academy in December 2024, recently won the 2026 Karting European Championship junior title. In an interview Green conducted with Sainz himself, the Spanish driver laid out a development philosophy that cuts against the instinct most beginners rely on when they feel out of their depth. You can read the full report at Motorsport.com.
Sainz was direct. "Don't be afraid to make mistakes. It's better to push too hard and make mistakes than try and be too conservative," he told Green. "Always try to be as close to the limit as possible."
He framed confidence as a performance multiplier, not a byproduct of tidy results. When risks pay off, the driver learns the ceiling is higher than it felt, and that knowledge compounds. At the development stage, the goal is not a clean lap sheet. The goal is understanding where the edge actually is, so you can approach it reliably once the stakes are higher.
Sainz also reflected that his own move from karting to cars felt natural rather than disorienting. The instinct to push carried over. What changed was the machinery, not the core discipline of reading and finding limits.
The same logic Sainz applied to a junior stepping into single-seaters applies to a sim racer moving from a single-screen rig to a full-motion simulator, or from casual laps to structured coaching. The category changes. The principle does not.
Consistent but slow laps can feel like progress because nothing goes wrong. The problem is that a driver who protects a comfortable margin never discovers what the car actually does at the edge. That gap in knowledge becomes expensive later, precisely when conditions or competition demand something you have never practiced.
Consider treating early sessions in any new environment as deliberate exploration rather than performance validation. Push the braking point a fraction deeper than feels comfortable. Carry a little more speed into a corner than seems appropriate. The mistake itself is data. Over-rotation tells you where the balance point is. A missed apex tells you how late you can realistically commit to a turn-in.
One approach coaches use: set a personal rule to find at least one new limit per session, even at the cost of a clean lap. The cleaner, faster laps follow once you know where the walls are.
At Academy Sim Racing, the facility includes a full-motion simulator, a triple-monitor rig, and multiple single-screen rigs. Each platform provides a different kind of feedback, and moving between them is itself a category change. Sainz's principle applies each time.
On the full-motion rig, the additional sensory information can initially push a new driver toward caution. That is the wrong response. The motion cues exist to help you find limits more accurately than a fixed screen allows. The rig communicates load transfer. Using that information, rather than protecting against it, is the whole point of the platform.
Structured coaching and classes at Academy Sim Racing are built around exactly this kind of intentional progression. A coach reviewing your telemetry or replay can identify the moments where you lifted unnecessarily, where you turned in early to protect margin, and where a bolder input would have produced a faster result. The feedback loop Sainz describes as natural in professional development can be built into a simulator session with the right structure behind it.
Sainz's point about confidence is worth holding onto. Talent and confidence are not identical, but they compound together. A driver who knows from experience that they can handle a corner at the limit approaches that corner differently than one who has only ever driven with a self-imposed ceiling. Sim time is one of the most accessible ways to accumulate that experience before it matters at a higher level.
Sainz's advice to Will Green comes down to a clear priority order: learn first, optimize second. Finding the limit is the learning. Consistency is what you build once you know where the limit lives.
Moving to a new simulator platform, a new car class, or any structured program? Give yourself permission to be messy early. Set a specific target each session, such as a later braking point, a higher minimum speed through one corner, or simply staying on the throttle one beat longer than feels safe. The discomfort is the point.
Book a session at Academy Sim Racing and find out where your edge actually is.
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