Williams Disaster
In a Dutch Grand Prix that saw team orders respected by George Russell at Mercedes and controversies erupt at Ferrari between the team and Lewis Hamilton, tensions between teammates were not lacking even in the backmarkers. Unlike strategic game issues, at Williams there was a real contact in the final stages of the race between Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon, with the two drivers having signed contract renewals with the Grove team on the eve of the Zandvoort weekend.
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The incident and Sainz’s apologies
With four laps to go, Albon attempted an outside pass at turn 1 on the Spaniard, who tried to defend his position by locking up. In doing so, the two came into contact, with the Thai driver forced to retire due to the damage sustained. Sainz, on the other hand, continued his race but served a 10-second penalty. Commenting on the incident, the former Ferrari driver took full responsibility, explaining the mistake in detail: “First of all, I apologize to Alex and the team for the contact at the end of the race. I had very worn hard tires and braked on the curb at turn 1, locking the wheels and failing to stop the car in time. Obviously, it was the last thing I wanted to end an already difficult weekend. Once again, I apologize to him and the team. Overall, we struggled to find a good rhythm during the weekend and had to do several tests to understand the problems we were facing, which penalized us and prevented us from fighting further today. The positive aspect is that we found solutions and learned useful lessons for the upcoming races, so we will try to come back stronger in Monza.”
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An episode that, according to Albon, is part of a racing incident, with #23 not wanting to criticize Sainz for the contact: “In clean air the car behaved well, not far from mid-field pace, so there are positive aspects to consider – he explained – the incident with Carlos was just one of those racing incidents: we were going into the same corner and he locked the wheels. It’s not how we wanted to end the weekend, and it’s not what the team needs, but it happened and we will discuss it together as always. We need to review our strategy because we were fighting with Fernando and he finished ahead of us: I think we pitted too early on the first stop, reacting to a potential undercut instead of following our strategy. This caused us to suffer many blue flags and get stuck in dirty air, which made my second stint problematic. We will analyze everything as a team and look forward to a cleaner weekend in Monza.”
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