Carlos Sainz slams Williams ‘worst execution seen in my life’ as glaring error exposed

Carlos Sainz took aim at Williams over their Brazilian Grand Prix Sprint qualifying “execution” after ending SQ1 as the slowest driver, sealing his elimination.

Sainz claimed over team radio that never before in his life had he seen such a poor showing, in terms of Williams not putting him in an on-track position to deliver his best possible lap. Yet, an error from the Spaniard at Turn 1 was highlighted as the cause of his elimination by Sky F1’s Karun Chandhok.

Carlos Sainz fumes over Brazilian GP SQ1 exit

Having finished the sole practice session at Interlagos eighth, Sainz went into Sprint qualifying with some momentum. That quickly evaporated as he finished SQ1 as the slowest of the 20 drivers.

“This is the worst execution, the worst execution, I have seen in my life,” he told his Williams team over the radio as his exit was confirmed.

Speaking following the session, Sainz doubled down on his feeling of frustration.

“We just simply didn’t do a good qualy,” he said.

“I mean, first run was quite messy with traffic, and problems with getting the tyres up to temperature. But then the second run, we managed to make our life even more difficult, and we almost didn’t put two laps in.

“So yeah, in general, just, I go out of this qualy without knowing what was the limit or the performance of the car, because we didn’t even do two laps.”

Having missed Thursday’s media day at Interlagos due to illness, Sainz added: “I’m physically obviously not 100 per cent, but the pace in FP1 shows that I could have done a fast lap today, if needed, but we managed to put ourselves in a position to never complete a fast lap, so it’s impossible to know what we could have done.”

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Sainz’s frustrations were put under the microscope by Sky F1 analyst Karun Chandhok.

He highlighted a lock-up at Turn 1 from Sainz as the reason why he did not make SQ2, an error which cost him “nine-tenths of a second”.

“It all would have been okay if he didn’t have this lock-up on the final lap,” Chandhok said of Sainz.

“As he comes down to Turn 1, he gets quite high up on the line. That’s okay. We’ve see other people doing it. But just at that same time, he has a lock-up. And I think when you’re that high up, you’ve got to just manage the brake pressure a little bit, the brake balance.

“Unfortunately, Carlos, he had that snatch, and that put him way off-line, and then he’s just completely lost all the time there.

“He lost nine-tenths of a second.

“Now, interestingly, he carried on pushing for the second and third sectors of the lap, just, I think, for his own reference, to see where he was and where the car was.

“Of course, they’ve got another go tomorrow, and his time would have been a [1]:10.2, which would have been enough to get through. So without that nine-tenths, he would have got through. The car was quick enough.”

The opportunity to progress in the Sprint may be there, with an orange alert for extreme weather in place for Sao Paulo until the end of Saturday.

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