Williams team principal James Vowles has offered a detailed explanation of what went wrong for Carlos Sainz during the F1 Mexico City GP.
Sainz headed into the weekend with an inevitable 5-place grid penalty looming over him as a consequence of his clash with Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli at the previous round in Austin. His strong qualifying performance carried him into Q3, where he placed seventh, but the grid penalty dropped him to twelfth for Sunday’s start.
Costly first lap tap
Speaking post-race in a video clip posted online by the team, Vowles offered a detailed breakdown of Sainz’s difficult afternoon and explained why Williams was unable to score points in Mexico despite their solid pace.
According to Vowles, Sainz’s race began to unravel already on Lap 1 as contact with Liam Lawson triggered a cascade of problems that would continue to haunt the Spaniard for the remainder of his outing. Lawson, meanwhile, pulled into the pits and retired his car altogether due to the damage sustained.
“So going through the race bit by bit, for Carlos, his race was over really at Turn 1,” Vowles stated.
“There were three cars—Alonso, himself, and Lawson—trying to fit into the space that really could only fit two. There was large contact on the front-left corner of Carlos’ car. It probably didn’t look like much, but that actually caused quite a bit of damage.”
He continued, explaining the significant knock-on effects and how they impacted the behaviour and drivability of the car: “What we then saw was a very large vibration that was building, really, lap on lap.
“It was to the extent where we lost both the front-left and the front-right wheel speed sensors, among other sensors as well that are held within the axle, just showing you how much vibration there actually was.
“As a result of that, we brought him into the pit lane to get rid of those tyres and evaluate the car to make sure it was okay going forward from there.”
Pit limiter nightmare
Race control flagged Sainz for speeding in the pit lane as he came in for his stop. The loss of wheel‑speed sensors prevented the pit limiter from working correctly, creating a nightmare spiral for the Williams driver.
“One of the consequences of losing both front wheel-speed sensors—and we’re aware of this—is that there is a risk to all of your control systems. That includes the pit limiter,” Vowles explained.
“Carlos came in effectively using just what was remaining of the wheel-speed sensors and was over.
“It’s disappointing to receive a penalty for this, but we were at 80.2 km/h relative to the 79.9 that we’d normally be targeting, 0.3 of a kilometre an hour in a circumstance where the driver couldn’t really do anything about it.”
That first speeding offence resulted in a five-second time penalty for Sainz. The first lap contact necessitated an early-stop for an unforeseeable tyre change and damage fixes, boxing the team into a two-stop strategy on Sainz’s side of the garage.
“That netted us that five second penalty. Obviously that early stop, in order to get rid of the tyres and rims that were damaged, meant we were now on a two-stop strategy, so we had to come through the pit lane one more time,” Vowles said.
Drive-through and eventual DNF capped off disastrous afternoon for Sainz
However, trouble struck again during the second stop, resulting in a far more costly penalty in the form of a drive-through, which meant yet another visit to the pitlane was on the cards for Sainz and his crippled car.
“Given what happened the first time around, we opted for Carlos to control the speed,” Vowles said. “He drove at around 73 km/h through the pit lane, that was all going very well.
“But on exit—and it really is muscle memory—he accelerated. Normally you’d hit into a limiter. The limiter wasn’t there, and he oversped into 88–89 km/h.
“All of this really just meant, in the end, that whilst we had the car performance to fight for a point, these penalties— the drive-through being the second of those that was awarded to us—meant our day was over in that regard.”
To make matters even worse, Sainz endured a self-inflicted crash late in the race, bringing out a VSC for the final few laps. Nevertheless, Vowles acknowledged Sainz’s efforts to fight on despite the setbacks.
“Even so, Carlos fought valiantly to try and chase down the points,” he said. “Made a mistake, went into the wall with the rear corner, and that put an end to his day.”
Alex Albon had a similarly frustrating race on the other side of the garage, voicing his dissatisfaction over team radio en route to a point-less finish in P12. Despite missing out in Mexico, Williams retains P5 in the Constructors’ standings as their nearest rivals, Racing Bulls, sit 39 points adrift heading into the São Paulo GP.
