Carlos Sainz has attacked Williams’ performance at the Formula 1 British Grand Prix, labelling it as “concerning” and “frustrating”.
Williams debuted a new front wing at Silverstone as it pushes to move up in the cutthroat midfield battle in 2026, with the team languishing in eighth in the standings on just 11 points.
Qualifying has proven to be a particular Achilles’ heel, with both cars struggling to get out of Q1 in recent races, the Grove outfit falling further behind their rivals.
Whilst qualifying at Silverstone saw both cars progress to Q2, Sainz dropped out of the points at the start, while Albon retired.
After the race, Sainz vented his frustrations, urging Williams to gain rapid understanding of where it is losing performance.
“We did a really good start and had a very good lap one through good car positioning, and I was up to the points and I thought that from there the race was on because the cars that I had behind, maybe with the dirty air giving them, I could hold them off for the rest of the race,” he said to media, including Motorsport Week.
“But as soon as we settled into our pace, we saw the Alpine and the Audis were just simply too quick for us, which has been the case all weekend, and we couldn’t hold them off.
“[It’s] concerning, frustrating because it starts to be a bad trend this year that we don’t seem to really find a lot of lap time when the upgrades are coming.
“We need to have a good sit-down now this week and analyse what’s happening because, unfortunately, we’ve shed a lot of weight out of the car by now, but the gap to the front keeps increasing and the gap to the leader of the midfield keeps increasing, so we don’t seem to be finding the lap time that we expected in the wind tunnel.”
Carlos Sainz “not happy” with Williams
Sainz did not hold back his frustration, but confirmed his willingness to work with Williams to find a solution to their current woes..
“Obviously, I’m not happy,” he said. “I’m very obviously upset.
“You’ll see me now a bit upset – worried, maybe, is the right word. No one likes getting overtaken, especially after so many good starts that we’re doing this year and getting ourselves in the points multiple times and then dropping back.
“It’s been a pattern this season. I’m here to always try and win, to always try and do the best I can, and today was a frustrating day, so you will not see me very cheerful.
“But tomorrow when I wake up and I go to the factory in the morning, I will be smiling again and trying to put all my energy to try and improve the situation and try and help the team to find the problems that we’re having, because it’s clear to me now that we’re having serious issues when developing this car and we are not bringing the performance that we thought we were.”
Sainz is rapidly becoming a frustrated figure in the paddock; a race winner languishing in a car in which he cannot showcase his talents. His patience with the current situation is wearing thin.
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