Carlos Sainz responds to FIA penalty decision after Albon Dutch GP clash
Sainz was given a 10-second penalty by the stewards for causing the crash.
Carlos Sainz admitted it was a “fair penalty” after he crashed into teammate Alex Albon and was penalised by 10 seconds.
The stewards deemed the Spaniard to be wholly at fault for an incident which ended up with Albon retired.
Williams drivers react to late Dutch GP crash
Late on in the race, the two Williams drivers were running at the back of the pack when Albon, who had fresher tyres, attempted to go past his teammate. As he looked to defend, Sainz locked up and crashed into Albon, critically damaging his floor.
It was the second questionable crash in as many races for Sainz who last time collided with Oscar Piastri despite being on blue flags. But on this occasion, Sainz accepted he was to blame.
“Fair penalty. I think a bit of a surprise when I went to defend, I had really worn hard tyres, struggling a lot with the car, with the pace all race,” he said.
“And when I went to brake on the inside, there is a massive bump in the inside of Turn 1 that when you are further on the inside, the bigger it gets.
“I just hit it with the plank and I had the front tyres in the air, and as soon as I touched the brake, I locked up and I took Alex with me, which is the worst possible outcome for that race because it’s not like we were fighting for anything big.
“But honestly, it got me so much by surprise. Apologies to him because it’s the last thing I wanted.”
Albon meanwhile said it was far less serious than Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo’s 2018 crash but did admit his confusion at why his fellow Williams driver attempted it.
The then-two Red Bull drivers famously collided in Baku, one of the most notable teammate crashes in F1 history, as Albon found himself on the wrong end of his own intra-team clash at Zandvoort.
“None of the Verstappen and Ricciardo incident, it’s less serious than that,” he said. “It happens.
“I think I was on better tyres than him at that stage in the race. If I’m being totally honest, I think he locked up.
“I saw him lock up, so I immediately tried to follow him in a straight line. But we made contact, and my floor was pretty damaged, so we had to box.”
Albon said he had not yet had a chance to speak to his opposite number but instead said his main frustration came from Williams’ strategy as he felt the timing of their pit stops meant he was navigating a blue flag every other lap.
“My biggest frustration is the race itself because I think we were in a good race but I think we boxed too early,” he said.
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“When you look at our race run when we did box, we came out behind a group of seven or eight cars.
“I need to understand why we boxed so early because we genuinely had a chance to score points today. If you look at our pace, it wasn’t fantastic, but because of the way that we started on the hard tyre, we actually gave ourselves a chance to overcut a lot of the cars behind us, so frustrating.
“But you can’t imagine in the middle of the race how many blue flags you get. I literally mean every other lap is a blue flag, and so when we pit too early on that first stint, we come out behind a group of midfield cars that we’re racing.
“They all boxed to miss all the blue flags, but because of us pitting early, we had no choice but to take the blue flags every lap.
“It’s like you get dirty air every lap to cars that you’re not even trying to race, and you’re in the marbles. The ones that boxed [later], they’re catching up to three, four seconds per lap because of the blue flags.
“That second stint for me was a complete mess.”
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