Sainz accepts blame for unfortunate contact with Albon in Dutch Grand Prix

Carlos Sainz has reflected on the error that saw him tangle with his Williams team mate Alex Albon late in the Dutch Grand Prix, with the Spaniard conceding that it was “the last thing you want to do”.

Days after the much-needed boost of Sainz and Albon committing to the Grove-based outfit for 2027, Williams endured another disheartening weekend in Zandvoort as they failed to score points for a sixth consecutive round.

However, that wasn’t always a foregone conclusion – Albon battled his way into top-10 contention before an unsuccessful strategy call and contact with Sainz, which came when the latter locked up and dragged the other car with him, led to his retirement.

Summarising how he felt after causing the incident, Sainz said: “We’ve been scrapping for P15/P16 all weekend. The situation in the race put Alex on a fresher medium behind. I was struggling a lot already with my hard tyres towards the end of the race.

“All of a sudden when I went to defend, a big bump in the braking into Turn 1 surprised me. I triggered a massive front lock and with that one thing, obviously I took Alex with me, which is the last thing you want to do with a team mate.

“Honestly, I was caught off guard with that big bump there and the braking and triggered a massive front lock that I couldn’t recover later. Apologies for that, and we will move on as a team. I think it’s just not there, the position that we want to be.”

He went on to declare that they never had enough pace to fight for points, which was made more disappointing by the fact that their rivals at Audi and Aston Martin both scored as a result of strong performances by Nico Hulkenberg and Fernando Alonso.

Contrastingly, Albon disagreed and implied that the Dutch Grand Prix represented a missed opportunity for the squad, but didn’t seem too upset with his team mate for cutting his race short.

“It happens,” he concluded. “It’s not good for the team – obviously we apologised to the team, but it’s not a Verstappen-Ricciardo Baku situation. We’ll review it for sure, but I think he maybe just locked up. I kind of tried to avoid it as well but we had damage, so we had to retire.

“We were with Fernando the whole race and then he finished P9, so we need to understand what happened. I know what went wrong – we pitted too early on the first stop and we came out behind a train of seven cars.

“I think we were afraid that Fernando was going to undercut us but in pitting too early, we basically spent the second stint stuck behind a train of cars.

“I think if we stayed out longer, we could’ve overcut the group behind us. I really do think points were possible today, so [it’s] frustrating.”