Dutch GP: Difficult Sprint & Qualifying for Williams F1 Team
By Williams F1 Team
August 23 2026
The Sprint and Qualifying session would prove to be both difficult sessions for the Atlassian Williams F1 Team with both Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz finishing down the order in both. The Sprint would see Carlos starting from the pit lane and for him his Sprint would become pretty much a test session. For Alex would he would finish where he started in 16th. Qualifying would see Alex 16th and Carlos 17th after making some changes that did improve their cars but not by as much as hoped. It is very much the case that both drivers are getting the best from a car that is far from its most competitive.
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Atlassian Williams F1
Team Dutch GP Sprint - Qualifying |
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Carlos Sainz:
"Sprint weekends don’t leave much time to root out problems and we used
the Sprint Race pretty much as a practice session, where we tried
different things to improve the balance. This afternoon the car was
feeling better and the changes we’ve done made it more comfortable to
drive. My lap felt decent and we missed out on Q2 by a very thin margin.
Tomorrow we’ll try our best to put everything together and execute a
clean race to extract the maximum of our car and see where that takes
us." |
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Alex Albon:
"I'm happy with that Q2 lap; we made a few changes that worked
between the Sprint and qualifying, so the balance was better, but we're
still struggling with pure downforce. I don't think I quite extracted
the maximum in Q1, but I definitely did in Q2, and it's probably the
most complete lap I've done in a while. We got into more of a rhythm
today and were more consistent with our laps, so at least we got one
Haas and both Astons behind us for tomorrow. We still need to understand
why our starting setup was so far out, because that's something we can
build on. With a better setup, maybe we can look after our tyres better
too - that's going to matter tomorrow as the deg was high in the Sprint.
Overtaking is trickier around Zandvoort, so I'm expecting some tyre
games in the race and multiple stops. Let's see what Sunday brings." |
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James Vowles Team Principal:
"It was a great lap from Alex in Q2. That’s all the car had in it today,
but it's good to see him across this weekend, really extracting
everything we could. With Carlos, just really on the back foot from
those first few laps in FP1, but he did a great job today to bring the
car back to somewhere sensible with just a few milliseconds between him
and Alex. It was also good to see us close the gap to the front of the
field. Still much larger than we want it to be, but generally in the
right direction.
We've saved some tyres for tomorrow's race,
which I think will also be very helpful, and hopefully, weather will
come into play, and we can take every opportunity that comes our way." |
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Track: Circuit Zandvoort,
Netherlands |
Lap Length: 4.259km |
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Sprint Race |
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A Albon |
• Finished: P16 • Started:
P16 • Strategy: Medium (Used) • Fastest lap: 1:17.673 |
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C Sainz |
• Finished: P20 • Started:
PLS • Strategy: Medium (Used) • Fastest lap: 1:17.431 |
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Grand Prix Qualifying |
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A Albon |
• Finished: P16 • Q1:
1:13.552 • Q2: 1:13.182 |
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C Sainz |
• Finished: P17 • Q1:
1:13.574 |
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