For the second race weekend in a row Williams left without points as Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz endured a difficult Sao Paulo Grand Prix.
Both drivers missed Q3 at Interlagos and generally lacked pace compared with many midfield rivals thanks to the circuit’s characteristics. In the 71-lap race they hovered around the edge of the top 10: Albon finished P11, less than two seconds behind Liam Lawson’s pack, while Sainz came home P13.
“I think we should have scored points today,” Albon said. “I need to review the strategy, but we put ourselves in a good position, then stayed out too long on the first stint and it compromised the rest of our race. So, we missed a good chance for points.” He added that the team must understand why the FW47 was so slow at a weekend like this. “I think we were the slowest car this weekend on paper, and we’ve just been struggling.”
Sainz lost significant front-wing damage after contact with Lewis Hamilton at the opening corner. “I think I just got squeezed by Lewis on the outside,” he said. “There were some cars on the inside, I had nowhere to go, and that compromised my race because I lost the front wing there – a big part of the front wing – and from there, I was struggling with a lot of understeer in the car and a lot of front deg [degradation], which made me slower than what we could have been. A bit of a slow pit stop at the beginning, and when you start adding things up, we are a couple of seconds away from the points – you always wonder what could have been.”
Despite the non-scoring weekend, Williams remain fifth in the Teams’ Championship, 29 points clear of Racing Bulls, with three Grands Prix and a Sprint left on the calendar.