Carlos Sainz reckons Williams has a weakness in qualifying rather than just the tyre preparation that the F1 team keeps bringing up.
Since the European leg kick-started, Williams has suffered in qualifying which has left them to do a better job in the races, which Alexander Albon has managed to do so. The Thai has scored well in the races he has been knocked out in either Q1 and or mostly in Q2.
Sainz hasn’t been lucky enough. Off-late, Williams has been better though. The Spaniard managed to qualifying well in Baku which resulted in a podium finish. Albon hasn’t suffered as well. They brought a temporary fix to their issues, which has seemingly worked.
A lot of the problem was put down to the tyre preparation, especially on the softer compound. But Sainz doesn’t see that as a problem. He reckons the Williams car has a weakness which they have to work upon. The blessing in disguise is that weakness helps it perform better in races.
“The reality is that we have a weakness in qualifying that we are trying to address,” said Sainz to media. “We keep criticising the tyre preparation, but my feeling after every race and the more I understand the car is that, it is weakness of the car also, not just the weakness of switching on and off the tyre.
“And probably that weakness in quali is what makes us so strong in the race and makes us do 50 laps on a medium, so you cannot have it all, we just need to reverse engineer the car and see why and how we can put ourselves in a better position,” summed up Sainz.
Teammate Albon, meanwhile, didn’t see tyre preparation as an issue either in Singapore and yet both were knocked out in Q2 before being disqualified. “For us in Singapore, we talk about tyres,” he said. “Honestly, the tyres were fine, it is a good sign and it is two weekends now where we have been on top of the tyres. It has been an Achilles heels for us all year so far.”
Here’s Luke Browning getting FP1 outing
Here’s Williams pair on DQ
Here’s Carlos Sainz on FOM scene
