How Sainz’s home race in Madrid unravelled as Williams struggle

If there was one weekend this year where Carlos Sainz was hoping that better Williams form and perhaps some attrition ahead would combine to propel him up the order it was always going to be his home race in Madrid.

Unfortunately, while the local hero received huge support, the new track did not favour the Williams FW48 from the start of practice on the car’s final outing before the Baku upgrade package arrives.

Things began to fall apart for Sainz in Qualifying, and then a first lap incident scuppered any chance of making progress. And it didn’t go much better for his Williams team mate Alex Albon.

The pair qualified in P16 and P17, with Albon ahead, and the fact that they were split by just 0.005s in Q1 suggested that both men had found the limit of the car.

It then got worse for Sainz as he received a three-place grid penalty for impeding Valtteri Bottas that sent him down to P20, behind the two Cadillacs.

Wary of how hard overtaking was expected to be, Sainz went for it at the start and he paid the price when he made contact with the Racing Bulls of Yuki Tsunoda at Turn 1, picking up some floor damage in the process.

"I had a really good start off the line,” he said. “I think I got three or four positions on the hard tyre, and then a lot of bunching up into Turn 1 caught me a bit out, and I had a small contact with Tsunoda that damaged my floor.

“Unfortunately from there on, I had damage in the car, and it was a race of survival, because I had no rear downforce in the car for the rest of the race.

“So yeah, we had nothing to lose on that Lap 1, and I wanted to get a good start to see if we could get anything going in this race.”

A little later Sainz got into another scrape at Turn 5, this time with his countryman Fernando Alonso, who felt he was squeezed.

Having damaged his front wing Alonso made his feelings about the incident clear on team radio, and just for good measure he reminded the world – and the stewards – of Sainz’s first corner mishap.

“Nothing to say really,” Sainz noted. “It's the nature of that corner when you turn right, and I think he complained on the radio, so he managed to get me a penalty, like always. I think it's the nature of that corner, it's always going to lead to these kinds of crashes, because there's only space for one.

“There's not even space for two. So yeah, and you cannot keep looking in your mirror while you're turning, and doing a right/left because you need to look forward. So at one point you need to focus on your own driving line, and I don't think Fernando was alongside me or anything.”

Sainz took a five-second penalty at his pit stop. Given the floor damage and the impact on performance the team eventually decided that it wasn’t worth continuing, and the car was retired after 43 laps.

“Just there was no downforce in the car,” he said. “So I was just driving around one second off the pace with the floor damage. It was slight damage, honestly, it wasn't that big of a contact, but with these cars, the moment you lose a piece of the floor, it's game over.”

He added: “But in reality, even with a perfect race, we wouldn't have finished higher than 16th. So yeah, not a lot to fight for today.”

It was not what Sainz wanted for his home town race, but on the plus side he at least enjoyed the love that he received from the crowd.

“Honestly, it was an amazing weekend on that front,” he said. “I truly enjoyed seeing the support that we got from all the fans. Their behaviour, the support that I've caught this weekend is second to none, and I cannot thank them enough for making me feel so at home in my home.

“And I’m looking forward already to next year. As I said in many interviews, hopefully this is the last year here in Madrid that I'm fighting for P16, and from next year onwards I can fight for something more, because honestly, it's not ideal to be fighting at home for a P15, P16 all weekend.”

Meanwhile it was an equally frustrating Sunday in Madrid for Albon, who ended up in the better of those two positions. However he struggled for pace throughout, coming under pressure from Cadillac’s Sergio Perez.

“I think one of my stronger weekends, but at the same time, just super, super sketchy,” said Albon. “Realistically, the pace isn't quick enough, and I think, especially on the harder tyres, we don't have the load to keep the tyre alive. So that tyre has actually got very little degradation, but it just cools down once the tread comes off the tyre.

“You need to keep pushing on it to keep the temps up. We don't have the grip to do it. Just the tyres get cold, basically.”