Williams driver Carlos Sainz failed to finish the 2026 F1 Austrian GP as an electrical issue saw his day end quite early.
Having missed FP1 for Luke Browning, the four-time F1 race winner looked a shade behind Alex Albon. However, a tremendous lap at the end of Q1 saw him outpace his Thai teammate by 0.209s. Sainz missed out on Q2 by 0.021s.
A terrible start for Franco Colapinto gifted the 31-year-old a position to move into P16. He then hassled Ollie Bearman through that first stint. An early stops to get rid of the softs allowed him to undercut Nico Hülkenberg and Esteban Ocon.
Unfortunately for him, though, an electrical issue ended his race on lap 23.
Carlos Sainz on a promising race cut short at 2026 F1 Austrian GP
In qualifying, Williams clearly had the third slowest car. Although his race only lasted just under a third of a distance, Carlos Sainz said in the print media pen he was encouraged by the fact he could keep the Haas, Alpine and Audi cars in his sights or be ahead before the gremlins arrived.
“We were having actually a better race than expected. We’re battling it out with the Haas, with the Audis and in front of one of the Alpines.
“Yeah, having more fun than expected, being able to race them. We changed obviously a few things with the car before quali and now before the race, after finding that there were maybe some things not quite right with my car.
“Suddenly the pace was much better, so a bit more of an encouraging race pace. We had a much better day, but unfortunately I think we had an electric outage.”
Not a problem faced previously
Asked if he had any hint of this occurring during the weekend, Sainz brushed that off.
“No, we haven’t had the smoothest weekend reliability and performance-wise, also on the engine side. This is a tricky year with the new regulations and the new PUs, but there were no signs of it yesterday in this regard.
“There were other things going on.”
Relief for Carlos Sainz after concerns earlier in the F1 Austrian GP weekend
So far in 2026, Carlos Sainz has had the upper hand on Alex Albon for the majority of the key sessions. It looked like the Thai had a small edge in Austria, until the former Ferrari F1 driver pulled out a great lap at the end of Q1.
In the race itself, he was at the back of a pack led by Esteban Ocon for 12th, consistently running within a second of Ollie Bearman.
It was a relief to the Madrid native as he felt the car was not running normally earlier in the weekend.
“Yeah, for sure [running a whole race distance would have been helpful].
“Honestly, I was pretty sure on Friday and Saturday morning there was something a bit off with my car. We managed to understand it overnight and before quali, and we seemed to have solved it.
“That releases a bit of doubt from my head, given also the race pace was very strong. Yeah, happy with that.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have the whole race to maybe evaluate it, but at the end I had the laps to the grid and the first two stints to evaluate it.”
Hopeful of progress at 2026 F1 British GP
Williams predicted a tough weekend at the Red Bull Ring due to the layout. The last two rounds have brutally exposed the current limitations of the FW48 following some progress in Miami, Canada and Monaco.
Carlos Sainz is hoping that the 2026 F1 Austrian GP the last really tough race of this season as Williams plan on multiple upgrades in the coming months, including at Silverstone. They will also help reduce the weight of the car.
“We were probably not going to get any points, so this result, this DNF, at least it comes at a time when we are not able to score points.
“Next week we expect a step in the right direction with the car and with the upgrades that we’re bringing.
“Hopefully this should be the last of our really bad weekends. Hopefully from Silverstone we can be a bit more in the fight.”
