The Williams F1 drivers have reflected on their contact at the 2026 Dutch GP that resulted in Alex Albon retiring from the race and Carlos Sainz receiving a 10-second penalty.
With fresher tyres, Albon had closed right onto the back of his teammate, and the pair went wheel-to-wheel into Turn 1 on Lap 67. On the inside Sainz locked up his front tyres, and the resulting contact between the two FW48s sent both cars down the escape road at Zandvoort.
In the collision, the side of Albon’s floor sustained damage, forcing the Thai-British driver to pit and retire from the race.
Sainz continued, bolting on a set of used softs, but the stewards handed him a 10-second penalty for the incident. He ultimately came home in sixteenth place.
Sainz takes full blame for Albon incident at the 2026 Dutch GP
Speaking in the print media pen after the F1 race, Carlos Sainz shouldered the blame for making contact with Alex Albon in the closing stages of the 2026 Dutch GP and acknowledged that the penalty he had received was justified.
The Spaniard revealed how he was struggling for pace on considerably older rubber at the time and explained that the bump on the inside edge of Turn 1 had bounced the car enough to lift his front tyres into the air. He added that this sequence of events triggered an immediate lock-up the moment he touched the brakes and sent him into a collision with Albon.
Declaring that causing an incident with his own teammate was an extremely disheartening outcome in a race where they never had enough pace to fight for points, Sainz reiterated how the lock-up caught him off guard. He took full accountability for his mistake once again and offered an apology to Albon.
“Yeah, no fair penalty. I had 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 of the race.
“And when I went to brake on the inside, there was a massive bump in the inside of Turn 1. When you are further in the inside, the bigger it gets.
“I just hit with the plank, I had the front tyres in the air, and as soon as I touched the brake, I locked up and I took Alex [Albon] 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 caught me so much by surprise. Apologies to him, because it’s the last thing I wanted.”
Albon not making a big deal of the Sainz contact
Meanwhile, Alex Albon brushed off the blue-on-blue incident at the 2026 Dutch GP and claimed that the clash with Carlos Sainz wasn’t as serious as former Red Bull teammates Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo taking each other out on the streets of Baku eight years ago.
“It’s not a Verstappen-Riccardo incident. I think it’s less serious than that.”
Noting that he was on fresher medium tyres—having pitted on Lap 51—Albon surmised that the four-time F1 race winner was responsible for the contact. Furthermore, he described how had unsuccessfully attempted to avoid any serious damage upon seeing his teammate lock up in front of him.
“I was on better tyres than him at that stage in the race. It was simply on him, if I’m being totally honest.
“I think he locked up. Yeah, I mean, 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.”
Asked if he had cleared the air with Sainz yet, Albon responded, “No, not yet.”
