Williams driver Carlos Sainz reflects on a ‘disastrous weekend’ in Spielberg. Due to brake problems, the Spaniard dropped out during the formation lap. It wasn’t long before teammate Alex Albon joined him in the garage; he too did not finish the Austrian GP. As a result, Williams – which has already shown this season that it can outperform the other midfield teams – was left without points.
The trouble for Carlos Sainz began during qualifying; damage to his FW47 and brake problems meant he could not advance beyond the nineteenth starting position. “We probably sustained damage to the floor, I was just told,” he explained at the time. “I don’t know exactly where, because I didn’t go off the track, but something must have fallen off – we were losing so much downforce. On top of that, we had brake problems from the start of qualifying.”
During the Grand Prix, Sainz hoped to navigate his way through the field with renewed energy, but his car gave up even before the start. As his competitors began their formation lap one by one, the four-time race winner was stranded at his starting position. Once he got the Williams running again, he returned to the pit lane with smouldering brakes, where his race came to an immediate end.
Is Williams Vulnerable?
“We need to see if there’s a connection between yesterday and today,” Sainz sighed to the media in Austria. “The fact is that there’s still a problem, and we need to figure out exactly what happened. The car braked from the rear when I started the engine, and as a result, I couldn’t drive anymore. I managed to reset the system, but after one lap, it locked up again at the back. But yes, a lot has been going wrong lately. This first half of the season has been tough in that regard – things just keep going wrong. Fortunately, this streak of bad luck has to end sometime.”
“We’ll have to start investigating why we’re having so many problems, because Alex Albon didn’t fare much better,” Sainz concluded. “We’ve been having brake problems, engine problems, overheating for several races now. In that sense, we’re sometimes really a bit vulnerable. Now it’s been another disastrous weekend for us, but we have to persevere and see how we can improve further.” The team from Grove has confirmed that it is investigating the problems with Albon’s car. The British-Thai driver has now retired from two races in a row due to engine problems.
