Singapore GP: Sprint Qualifying frustrations for Williams F1


By Williams F1 Team
October 10 2026

In what could only be described as frustrating and disappointing the Atlassian Williams F1 Team would see both their drivers fail to make it past SQ1 in the Sprint Qualifying for the 2026 Singapore GP. Alex would finish in 19th and Carlos 22nd. Across the FP session prior to the qualifying session the team would have various issues to contend with which would add to their difficulties in Sprint Qualifying. But then reports would come from both Carlos and Alex about a loss of engine power during their runs in SQ1 which added on top of their own car issues made their final sprint qualfying runs that much more difficult. It was later confirmed that the FIA had disabled Overtake mode as a result of a Red Flag during SQ1 but had failed to turn it back on and only saw their mistake with a small amount of time remaining. This would impact both Williams cars. The FIA acknowledged that their mistake but they did not establish whether this mistake would have changed which drivers progressed to SQ2.

 
 Atlassian Williams F1 Team Singapore GP Sprint - Qualifying
 
Albon
 
Sainz

Carlos Sainz:
"We had another software issue that impacted multiple cars. It was momentary, but I lost power during my flying lap and the lap was compromised. On top of that, we had some issues in FP1 with the brakes and had to make some changes that weren’t ideal. Scrappy lap overall as I also locked up into turn 8, so a qualifying to forget. It’s disappointing but we have another chance to go again tomorrow."
Albon

Alex Albon:
"It wasn't the Sprint qualifying we wanted, and we need to understand why the car felt so different from FP1. We'll dig into the data tonight, as Carlos and I are both experiencing some handling issues, compounded with the software issues in SQ1. There's work to do before tomorrow, and we'll see what we can learn in the Sprint to help set ourselves up for the rest of the weekend."
 
Vowles

James Vowles Team Principal:
"A very frustrating evening. After the red flag in the first session of Sprint qualifying there was an issue with the way overtake mode was activated which definitely had an impact on our lap times. We are confident this will be fully investigated by the FIA.

This issue doesn’t change the fact that our car performance isn’t where we want it to be – without the issue we had the potential to get both cars into the second part of Sprint qualifying but we will turn our attention now to getting the most out of tomorrow."
 
Sainz
 
Marina Bay Street Circuit, Singapore Lap Length: 4.927km
Sprint Qualifying
 
A Albon • Finished: P19
• SQ1: 1:36.130
C Sainz • Finished: P22
• SQ1: 1:37.376
 
Albon
 
Sainz
 

Bookmark or share this story with: