‘Far too many issues’ for Sainz to score in Mexico City as ‘something not working’ for Albon

Williams came into the Mexico City weekend full of hope for a strong showing – and Carlos Sainz’s pace certainly gave the team plenty of early encouragement. But it all unravelled on race day for the Grove-based team, with neither driver able to score.

Sainz had looked the stronger of the duo in practice and qualified a brilliant seventh, but started 12th thanks to a penalty he picked up in Austin for a collision with Kimi Antonelli. That left the Spaniard very much in the thick of the midfield pack in Mexico, and he was immediately involved in a first lap incident with Liam Lawson.

At first it did not look too costly, with Sainz rising up into the top 10, but problems began when he made his first pit stop and found himself with a time penalty for speeding in the pit lane. A second penalty for the same offence was escalated to a drive through, wrecking Sainz’s race.

“We had contact in Turn 1, a big melee of three or four cars that were side by side. In that contact, we damaged the rim of the first set of tyres that were giving massive vibrations,” the Spaniard explained.

“We lost all the sensors of the front tyres which meant we lost the possibility to engage the pit limiter. So, every time we were going through the pit lane, we were having issues because the sensor wasn’t reading and I didn’t know what speed I was going.

“So, every time we were in the pits I was getting a penalty. Which in the end, even if we were on for points scoring positions today, we just had too many issues in the car – far too many issues from that Turn 1 race incident.”

Sainz did not even see the chequered flag, spinning into retirement in the stadium towards the end of the race and opting to park up behind the barriers. That left his team mate to take the chequered flag in 12th, having started 17th.

Albon had gambled on a hard tyre start from so far back, but running a long first stint did not help his chances on a day where the soft and medium tyre were demonstrably faster.

Asked what he thought about his strategy after the race, he said: “Not ideal really. We had a lot of examples in the race where we could have been a bit more dynamic and switched. It was clear it wasn’t working but I don’t know, we were hoping for a little bit of a miracle, so we just stayed out there and fell back.

“The cars that had already pitted overtook me again and it was just this vicious cycle. The hard tyre was pretty bad.”

Albon has not scored in a Grand Prix since Monza, but his team mate has shown there is definite pace in the car. The Thai driver admitted his confusion as to why he cannot extract it, and during the race was heard on the radio asking his engineer about “the other car” and Sainz’s settings in a bid to sort out the balance of his own FW47.

“What is needed [before Brazil] is a full deep dive into what is going on," Albon explained. "It feels awful out there the last few races and can’t really understand why. So, [we] need to figure out why. I haven’t lost pace myself just randomly, I feel there is something not working.”

The one piece of good news for Williams however, is that they did not lose any ground in the Championship, as their closest rivals Racing Bulls and Aston Martin also failed to score in Mexico.