Williams’ Carlos Sainz qualified P13 for the F1 2026 race in Malaysia. The Spaniard was happy with reaching Q2 and said it was the best the team could get.
Sainz was P13 in both Q1 and Q2. He set a time of 1:37.651, +1.174s behind Verstappen in P1, in the first session. He improved a bit in the next segment, with a time of 1:37.527, +1.831s behind the Dutchman.
This is a track that exposes the FW48 as it does not work well in high-speed, long corners. The four-time race winner pulled out unbelievable laps to make it into Q2, almost a second faster than teammate Albon, who was out in Q1.
“I didn’t expect much: Sainz after surprising Qualifying result
“Honestly, we’ve been having a very difficult weekend,” admitted the Williams’ driver after F1 2026 Qualifying in Malaysia.
Sainz had finished P20 in FP1, P17 in FP2, and P18 in FP3. Only beating Cadillac seemed certain head into qualifying. However, he was faster than Hülkenberg, Stroll, Albon and the Haas duo on merit.
“I expected struggling to beat any car that was not the Cadillac this weekend as you saw with Aston and Haas being clearly quicker than us in every practice session.
“Going into qualifying I didn’t expect much. But already my first lap of Q1 was P11. I think then the second lap I managed to improve four tenths from that and get the car into Q2, and then another very solid lap in Q2.
“Honestly, as good as it gets for us today,” concluded Sainz on getting the maximum out of his machinery. “Probably the best laps of the season even though they will not shine very much because it’s not a Q3 or nothing like that. But as good as it gets for us.”
Williams’ set-up and car limitations throughout the weekend
On the FW48’s performance in Sepang, Sainz explained how difficult it has been to find any kind of decent balance with the car having so many different issues: “It hasn’t been an easy weekend setting up the car.
“We have all sorts of limitations this weekend with long corners, downforce, heat, low grip tarmac so all the weaknesses of the car come up and we struggled a lot this weekend.
“In the end I found a baseline or a set-up that more or less worked everywhere and I put to a clean lap, some clean repetitive laps but we’re still sliding a lot more than others so tomorrow will be a very tough day for us.”
When further asked about how difficult sliding is as a limiting factor, Sainz said: “Very difficult.
“In a track like here with the heat, with the low grip tarmac, with the long corners downforce is king. And for tyre management the best thing you can do is have more downforce.
“So I expect that tomorrow for us will be a long day,” predicted the Spaniard for Sunday as an Aston, an Audi, an Alpine and a Racing Bulls with more downforce are behind him on the grid. “But at least we’re starting five positions ahead from where we would have started with a normal quali.
“So the good quali at least is putting us at least five positions ahead and we will maybe try and play around with the others on strategy and track position, but tomorrow will be a long day I think.”
