The Williams team’s season has been anything but calm. The outfit had set the new 2026 regulations as the golden opportunity to reclaim the summit, but instead they find themselves in the third-from-last place in the constructors’ standings, with only twelve points on the board after 19 races.
Within the chaos, at least Carlos Sainz is staking his claim against his teammate. He leads on points, and in the head-to-head the Spaniard is comfortably ahead. However, Alexander Albon has an excuse. He believes that the two Williams cars are not identical, and that has been the case since the start of the season.
Sainz beats Albon 13-6 in qualifying
Carlos Sainz does not have many reasons to boast about the 2026 season. Williams is bottoming out the standings, but at least there is one consolation: the Spaniard has turned his situation around with Alexander Albon and is now ahead of him. Sainz has seven points to five for Albon, and he leads 13-6 in qualifying. But the Thai driver is not entirely convinced.
In a recent interview, Albon said that “we are dealing with our own problems as a team. And that’s not just on my part. Saying that both cars perform in the same way would not be true. I don’t buy that the two cars are equal. We have been dealing with these issues since the start of the year”.
In fact, Albon points out that “if you look at the last four or five weekends, we are very close in terms of performance. But it has taken us a while to get here.” In other words, the Thai driver believes Sainz enjoyed a better Williams in the early part of the season, and now the two cars have balanced out.
Last season Albon finished the world championship ahead of Sainz, with 73 points to the Spaniard’s 64, though in a sense it was a mirage due to Sainz’s difficulties adapting to a new car. In the year’s final stretch, Sainz even managed two podiums, and another in the Sprint, something Albon has not achieved in five years with Williams.
Albon says we should watch “the situation of George and Kimi at Mercedes, that shows the manufacturer is having problems. So you can imagine they are not the only two to have trouble.” He refers to the Mercedes engine, which Williams uses, showing disparity between units. There are also differences at McLaren and even Alpine.
And overall it has been a year of significant disparity between teammates, and a clear example is what is happening at Cadillac between Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas.
Images | Formula 1
