It was a strong debut for Carlos Sainz at Williams: in his first official outing as a full-time driver for the Grove-based team in Australia, the Spaniard achieved more than satisfactory results.
In the first free practice session, the former Ferrari driver finished second behind Lando Norris in the McLaren and ahead of his former teammate Charles Leclerc. FP2 was more challenging, with Carlos Sainz unable to replicate his earlier performance, finishing just outside the top 10.
Interestingly, both he and Alex Albon set the exact same lap time of 1:17.302. Now, the team will analyze the data ahead of Saturday’s qualifying in Melbourne.
“Definitely a positive Friday for us, with a rather strong FP1. In FP2, we couldn’t find performance with the soft tires, so we need to analyze this aspect before tomorrow’s qualifying. If we can unlock some performance on the softs, then I think we can be competitive,” Carlos Sainz said in a press release after the second free practice session for the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.
“The field is extremely tight, with various teams putting in some very fast laps. So I think tomorrow will just be about executing a clean qualifying session and seeing where that puts us.” – the Spanish driver pointed out.
The same issue was also reported by Alex Albon. The Thai driver, after highlighting a solid first free practice session, explained that managing the soft compound was more challenging. In contrast, there were no issues with the medium tires: “I think we’ll comfortably be in Q3 [on the mediums], but the softs have changed a bit compared to last year, and we’re still trying to understand them. That said, today wasn’t a bad start.”
Leave a Reply