Carlos Sainz says Williams exceeded pre-race expectation to score a point in F1 Singapore GP, as Alexander Albon agrees that the pace was pretty strong.
After double disqualification from F1 Singapore GP qualifying, Williams were forced to the back of the field, where Sainz started from last row but Albon undertook a pitlane start after changes made to the car. Pre-race predications didn’t have them in points from so far back.
But the strategy worked for Sainz after strong pace. He stretched his first stint to as far as possible, which allowed him to switch to the soft compound with enough lap to try and snake through the field. He made up about five places to get back into points in 10th.
He was somewhat helped by Isack Hadjar’s engine issues, otherwise the prediction was to finish around P11 and P12. It was a sound fight through the field to recover something from the weekend after the disappointment in qualifying and also the disqualification then after.
“Yeah, obviously with the bad news overnight, from P13 I was hopeful of points, maybe probably less as per our simulations, which said that we need safety cars to get points but the pace was so good that we managed to extract a point from our difficult Singapore,” said Sainz to media. “It was a boring one because it was one-stop, nothing really happened.
“We had such strong pace and overtake at the end that…I think yeah, we were only one of the midfield cars to overtake. Before pitting I saw Fernando just past me and I had Bearman and Hadjar behind me, so I said I need to recover at full speed with 15 laps. On Hadjar, I thought maybe there is no chance that I can get back to points, maybe a P11 or P12 which was the best case scenario in the morning.
“But when I put the softs and I was three seconds quicker than everyone, I thought maybe we have a chance. We did some clean and sharp overtaking to not lose any time, using the DRS wisely and yeah, honestly, very happy because with a midfield car to still manage to overtake cars in Singapore, you need to be clearly ahead in pace and we were.
“For me, obviously I put at the end, with the track evolution and everything, I was flying on the soft. I think the idea was to extend the medium a lot, make the medium look the hard, that’s what the team was wanting to do. I was holding on to really some good pace on the mediums and then on the softs, we were just two or three seconds up on the pace to clear the cars.
“I think an ideal weekend would have been a P7 or P8. Realistically speaking, in the race, we had a lot of pace, again maybe I feel like in Baku, we could have been mixing it up with Antonelli possibly if we could have started around him,” summed up Sainz, who continued his fine show following on from a podium in Baku. Teammate Albon did not find the same luck in both the races.
He was likely on the similar strategy but couldn’t extract the same as Sainz. In fact, it was partly affected by the idea to aide the Spaniard ahead by slowing down others, especially Liam Lawson. The Thai obliged and managed to slow the Kiwi down enough to allow his teammate emerge ahead of them. It wasn’t ideal for him, but it eventually helped Williams to score a point.
“Yeah, it was an interesting race throughout,” said Albon to media. “I think the direction he [Sainz] took is something to explore in the future, it worked. But I thought realistically if we are going to start from back of the grid, you might as well try something and use it as a learning curve, maybe not ideal in a track where we actually were quite quick all weekend.
“I just thought lets just try, why not. Maybe it is probably not the direction we want to go in. But at the same time, we weren’t slow, we had a slow pit stop and we ended up directly in front of Oscar, had to let Oscar pass under blue flags, but I was on softer new tyres, but I had to wait for him to catch the cars ahead. Anyway, I saw a lot of rear wings and bit boring. Honestly, I was like something at some point, especially with rain on Lap 1. But nothing happened, yeah frustrating.”
Here’s moves from Carlos Sainz: https://x.com/F1/status/1975289204809552124
Here’s how F1 Singapore GP panned out
