– Carlos Sainz has taken full responsibility for the team-internal collision with Williams teammate Alexander Albon at the Formula 1 race in Zandvoort and spoke of a “fair penalty.” The Spaniard was given a ten-second time penalty for the collision shortly before the end of the race.
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Albon wanted to pass his teammate on the start-finish straight with better tires six laps before the end of the race and positioned himself outside before turn 1, when Sainz locked up his wheels while braking and slid straight into Albon’s car, damaging it. Both Williams drivers had to take the escape road.
“I was a bit surprised when I wanted to defend. I had really worn hard tires and was struggling a lot with the car and the race pace,” Sainz tries to explain. “And when I wanted to brake on the inside, there was a huge bump on the inside of turn 1. The further inside you go, the bigger it gets.”
The Spaniard says he bottomed out, causing the wheels to be in the air when he hit the brakes. “That caused me to lock up and take Alex with me, which is the worst possible outcome for this race, because it wasn’t like we were fighting for anything big,” he laments.
At that time, the two Williams drivers were only ahead of Sergio Perez in positions 15 and 16. “But honestly: It really surprised me. Apologies to him, because that was the last thing I wanted.”
Albon: Not like Verstappen/Ricciardo 2018
Since it was not about anything for Williams anyway, Albon does not want to overstate the incident: “This is not Verstappen and Ricciardo, it is less serious than that,” he refers to the crash of the then Red Bull teammates in Baku 2018.
Nevertheless, he sees full blame on Sainz: “To be completely honest, it was simply on him,” says the Thai driver. “I think he locked up. I saw him lock up, so I immediately tried to follow him straight. But we touched, and my floor was quite damaged, so we had to pit.”
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There Albon parked his car but was still classified 17th due to the distance covered, while the penalty for Sainz had no effect as he had finished last anyway.
Albon laments: Pitted too early
More than the incident, he is frustrated by the once again poor result, which was a missed opportunity for him. For a long time, Albon was ahead of Fernando Alonso, who eventually scored two unexpected points for Aston Martin in ninth place.
“But I think we pitted too early. If you look at our race progression: When we stopped, we came out behind a group of seven or eight cars. I need to understand why we pitted so early, because today we really had the chance to score points,” he complains.
“If you look at our pace, it wasn’t fantastic. But because we started on the hard tires, we actually gave ourselves the chance to overcut many of the cars behind us.”
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The team-internal collision was then the crowning conclusion of another disappointing weekend.
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