Sainz and Albon reflect on Williams collision after difficult race

Credit: Luca Martini / WHYOUT images

Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon were left to pick apart a torrid weekend for Williams after the two teammates made contact with each other during the race, with Sainz taking responsibility for triggering the collision under braking.

Sainz locked his front wheels defending from Albon into Turn 1 after hitting a bump on the brakes, and the resulting lock-up saw him clip his teammate as he attempted to recover the car. "Yeah, very difficult race. We've been scrubbing for P15, P16 all weekend, you know. And yeah, the situation of the race put us with Alex on a pressure medium behind.

"I was struggling already a lot with my hard tyres towards the end of the race. And all of a sudden, when I went to defend, a big bump in the break, you know, into turn one surprised me. I triggered a massive front lock," Sainz said.

"And without wanting, obviously, I took Alex with me, which is the last thing you want to do with a teammate. But yeah, honestly, I was caught off guard with that big bump there in the braking and it triggered a massive front lock that I couldn't recover later. So apologies for that. And we will move on as a team. I think it's just not the position we want to be," he added.

Asked whether a smarter strategy could have salvaged more from the weekend, given teammate Fernando Alonso had scored points for Aston Martin, Sainz was blunt about where the real problem lay. "No, because we don't have the pace. So if we don't have the pace, there is no points to be given for us or to fight for," he said.

"Yeah, honestly, we are struggling a lot with the car, with the pace. It's so difficult out there, it's difficult to describe how difficult the car is to drive and to keep on track. So it's honestly, yeah, no, no, we're not," he added.

Albon, who had run alongside Alonso for much of the race before the incident with Sainz ended his afternoon, admitted he could not initially explain how the Aston Martin driver had come out ahead in ninth. "Yeah, I mean, we were with Fernando the whole race and then he's finished P9, so I don't understand what's happened. But I know what went wrong," Albon said.

He pointed to a premature first pit stop as the moment the race slipped away. "We pit too early on the first stop and we came up behind a chain of seven cars. I think we were afraid that Fernando was going to undercut us. But in pitting too early, we basically spent the second set behind a train of cars. I think if we stayed out longer, we could have most probably overcut the group behind us. I really do think points were positive today, so yeah, frustrating," he added.

Albon was diplomatic when it came to the clash with his teammate, choosing not to apportion blame despite the damage that forced his retirement. "And obviously frustrating in that contact with Carlos as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not good for the team, obviously, we apologise to the team, but it started the Stafford-McLeod-Baku situation," he said.

"Yeah, we'll review it for sure. I think he maybe just locked up and I tried to avoid it as well, but we had damage, so we had to retire," Albon concluded.