Sainz reveals reason for Qualifying no-show amid ‘disappointing’ weekend

Carlos Sainz was frustrated after he endured more disrupted running on Saturday, missing out on Qualifying entirely to leave him to start the Australian Grand Prix with significantly less running than his competitors.

The Spaniard has only managed to complete one full session over the weekend so far, ending FP1 in P12 before he had to return to the pits while Williams investigated an issue at the midway point of FP2.

While he was able to start final practice, he was quickly sidelined as he suffered a loss of power on the opening lap and came to a halt at the pit entry, prompting a Virtual Safety Car while his FW48 was recovered.

To add to his frustrations, the same issue meant that Sainz was resigned to the garage as Qualifying got underway, with the team unable to find a fix before Q1 came to an end. He was joined by Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll in being ruled out of the session and will start from P21 on the grid.

“We had an ERS [Energy Recovery System] package issue and we didn’t manage to solve it in time for Qualifying,” Sainz said. “No laps in FP2, no laps in FP3, no laps in Q1 so a very disappointing first weekend with this set of regulations.

“No FP2 long run, no FP2 run on softs, no FP3 laps, no Q1. Even going into China next weekend, not being able to do mileage this weekend and not being able to do a Qualifying session for the first time is not ideal to start the year. It looks like a long year ahead of us so hopefully we can start sorting our issues.”

His team mate Alex Albon was able to gather far more learnings across the sessions, including driving some race simulation laps in FP2, but his weekend has been far from faultless.

Placing a high of P13 in Q1, Albon went into his final run in Q2 in 15th place. A spot in the top-10 had eluded him to that point, and any chance of progressing to Q3 was hindered by an excursion over the grass that discounted his lap.

Asked whether the error cost him, he said: “No. We’ve got half a second to the car in front so what can we do to get that lap time? It was okay given everything. I think it was a better result than we expected going into the weekend.

“It was able to beat one of the other midfield cars so let’s see how it goes. It’s been a difficult, difficult weekend – we’ve been on the back foot with Carlos obviously missing out on a lot of running. On our side, we’ve had a lot of technical issues as well. We’ve been fighting fires a little bit. We know where there’s lap time, it’s a bit obvious to us.

“I’ve done two practice starts in my 2026 career so far. Tyre deg, graining seems bad for us. We made some set-up changes to fix that hopefully. I want rain, but that’s not going to happen!”