– Just before the end of the Formula 1 race in Zandvoort, Williams experienced a major disaster. Carlos Sainz and Alexander Albon collided in turn 1, after which Albon had to retire and teammate Sainz received a ten-second penalty for causing the accident.
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The two Williams drivers were finally classified in P16 and P17 – the last two positions. While the race stewards blamed Sainz for the crash on Sunday, team principal James Vowles sees the situation somewhat differently from an internal perspective.
In his video format The Vowles Verdict he explains: “There are many questions about who is to blame and who is not. I’ll start with this: I think both of our drivers share responsibility for not colliding with each other.”
“It is difficult to blame one or the other mostly, but both share some of the blame. In this particular case, I actually think we as a team also share some of the blame,” emphasizes Vowles.
The team principal reveals: “We tried to keep Carlos out during the VSC. The reason for this was that if we had stopped, he would have ended up behind Alex and Franco anyway. That would have put us right back where we were before – without the necessary pace to be able to overtake them.”
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“However, this also put our cars in a situation where they fought each other on track without the chance of scoring points,” he explains and admits: “That is also not a situation we should put them in.”
The consequence was a battle between Sainz and Albon for P15, in which Sainz, on significantly older tires, eventually ran into his teammate. The Spaniard himself took the blame for the accident after the race and said: “Apologies to him, because that was the last thing I wanted.”
According to Vowles, however, the team should not have put him in this thankless position in the first place.
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