Carlos Sainz’s arrival at the Williams Formula 1 team offered incumbent Alex Albon two clear options for how to deal with it.
He could have put the barricades up; made it difficult for his new F1 team-mate to settle in by keeping everything to himself, and aimed to do everything in his power to protect his own position within the squad.
Or he could embrace the opportunity of having someone this fast, experienced and technically adept alongside him. Albon could treat Sainz as openly as he did his rookie team-mates beforehand, so they can fire off each other and help lift the whole Williams team forwards towards the front of the grid.
It sounds like Albon has picked option two.
From Sainz’s perspective, as he reflects on his early experiences at Williams, he admits to being a bit taken aback by just how open Albon has been – something he has not experienced before from his previous F1 team-mates.
And it is making him think that he potentially needs to be a bit more open than would be conventional for an F1 driver.
“I've never seen a guy that is so genuine and so open and so willing to make progress with the team, and listen to me, tell me about what he knows already about the team, about the car," explained Sainz at the launch of the team’s FW47 at Silverstone last week.
"He is sharing with me: 'What do you think about this? What do you think about that?'
“I ask him, I bounce back and ask him so many other questions... and so far, honestly, we're having an incredible relationship, super open.
“I think we both know that if we're going to make this team competitive again and fight for wins again, we just need - between him and me - to push in the same direction.
"And maybe to sacrifice a bit of our own, let's say, driver secrets or driver things that you would keep for yourself - to maybe share them to see if we can have faster progress.”
While it is easy in this honeymoon pre-season phase for team-mates to say the right words about each other, the bond between Sainz and Albon does seem to be genuine.
At a Williams partner event held on the eve of the FW47 launch, the two drivers were spotted on the sidelines locked in a deep conversation with each other over ride heights and set-ups and technical aspects of the current generation of cars. This was not something being done for the cameras.
It points to Albon not viewing Sainz as a threat to his career because of the extra challenge he will face from the other side of the garage compared to who he has been up against at Williams before.
Instead, Albon feels that there is far more Sainz can bring to the table by being an ally rather than an enemy.
“I see it more of an opportunity that Carlos is a very proven driver,” explained Albon about the approach he has taken.
“He’s just come off one of his best years in F1, so I’m confident in myself and I’m excited to have a great team-mate who I can learn from.
“I hope I can bring something to him as well. In the end, the direction of the team [must be] to go forwards in the future.
“I think we’re going to work pretty well together. Just from what we’ve spoken about and what we like about the car is quite similar.”
Williams has already taken some encouragement from the fact that Sainz’s feedback after the first test in Abu Dhabi last year – of the strengths and weaknesses of the FW46 – was identical to what Albon had said at the time.
That their feelings with the car are in line, based also on simulator runs and a recent TPC run, and that they seem to want the same things from it, can only increase the momentum to bring the change Williams needs.
Sainz added: “I honestly think there's performance in that.
“I think the fact that we have an experienced driver that has been three years in this team, that knows the process, is fundamental to understand where we were, where we're going, where we're at.
“But to have an experienced driver coming from the outside, from a more competitive team, and seeing what he can bring in, and share with that driver that has been here for that three years…
“Having that combination on top of it, of them both sharing and being open about it, it can be a very powerful combination.
“And that's probably why JV went for this combo! I'm confident that we can together bring tenths of performance.”
'JV' - aka team boss James Vowles - knows a thing or two from his prior spell at Mercedes about how the relationship between drivers can define an awful lot when it comes to making life easy or difficult for their engineering crews around them.
And while championship-winning squads can, and often do, overcome the challenges of tensions between their stars, for an outfit in Williams’s position – that is putting the building blocks in place – it would be counter-productive to find itself fighting negativity within at this point in its cycle.
The team is not naïve enough to believe that there isn’t potential for trouble on the horizon, though – especially with Sainz admitting himself he does not know how he is going to feel when it comes to fighting for lesser points places as opposed to wins.
There are going to be moments where Sainz and Albon potentially do not see eye-to-eye on track, or things are not clicking for one of them and competitive tensions can rise to the surface.
But Vowles has faith that in Sainz and Albon there are two drivers seeing the bigger picture at play.
“This will not be successful if any one individual is above the team - whether it's myself, Carlos or Alex,” Vowles said.
“It needs all three of us and then the 1000 individuals [in the team] pointing in one way, with the sole goal of this team becoming championship contenders.
“Along the journey, there's going to be issues. There's going to be one driver or one individual that is doing worse on one weekend than the other. They're aware of that, and we've already had that direct chat about it.
“They're very much of the mindset, in fact furthermore, they came up with suggestions and ideas of how actually we can make this better.
“So they're aligned with it, they know where they are, they know where we're going, and the bigger goal is how we move the team forward.”
