Sainz's eventful Miami GP: "This isn't how I race, guys. I've lost a lot of confidence here."

During the final 15 laps of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz maintained a deliberate pace to keep his teammate Alex Albon within range. of the DRS and protect himself from Isack Hadjar , faster than the Thai. Suddenly, on the last lap, the engineer warned Albon that the gap to Sainz was widening beyond second, with the risk that this entailed. " What are you doing?" the Thai driver asked worriedly over the radio , still requesting the Spaniard's help. He didn't care so much about the team's instructions when he snatched the position from Sainz at the last Miami Grand Prix.

It wasn't the first time they swapped positions after their collision at the first corner. On lap 19, Albon overtook Sainz, for good. "The team told us we were going to freeze positions , so... I don't know if he got the message or not, but he overtook me," Sainz complained at the finish, annoyed that his teammate hadn't respected the team's theoretical instructions.

"If they tell me on the radio that they're not going to attack me and that we're going to drive together, when I'm overtaken, as a driver you feel stupid, because you feel powerless, you're playing the good guy, in the same way that I played the good guy in Jeddah, they overtake you, and you look completely stupid," the Madrid native lamented at the end, recalling his work in the previous race.

"This isn't how I race, guys, I don't care. I've lost a lot of confidence here. In everything." That's how Sainz spoke over the radio about Albon's maneuver on the deceleration lap of the Miami Grand Prix. It was just one episode of a stormy Miami for the Spaniard, with errors from the driver and team, including an aerodynamic problem that cost him a percentage of his load and performance, as well as some added doses of bad luck.

Last year's Grand Prix illustrated the long road Sainz had to navigate with Williams. Despite finishing ninth, he couldn't capitalize on the speed and potential of his car in Miami, unlike Albon. This was a source of irritation, but not only that. Williams also exposed its operational shortcomings on a weekend, who would have thought, where Ferrari didn't see them at all.

The detached pieces

In the race, he soon began to suffer. It was Albon who clipped Sainz's left wheel as the latter was avoiding Norris. Without any damage, his initial pace was superior to Albon's even on the used medium tire, a mistake made by the team in the sprint race. However, for no apparent reason, several pieces of the right-hand side of Sainz's Williams detached , which resulted in a loss of downforce—19 points, to be exact.

At the finish, Albon's average lap time was 1:34.38, compared to 1:34.60 for Sainz . The Spaniard was 0.222 tenths slower on average per lap than Albon, a nearly identical difference in the fastest lap between the two. Considering that the loss of power compensation was quantified between three and five tenths per lap in a configuration like Miami's, Sainz held his own, but there was still more trouble to come.

With a lighter load, the car sliding, and the already worn medium tire losing efficiency, Sainz asked the team for both he and Albon, from behind, to go for the Mercedes without hindering each other . "Come on, guys, we're putting the race at risk, let's get into the rhythm. I could use a little help from Alex," the Madrid native told Sainz over the radio. The hand reached him, but to his neck.

"There was a team order. I'm not sure if it reached the other car, but they told me I wasn't going to be overtaken , and at the first opportunity, I was," Sainz complained afterward. "If we want to be a strong team and run races with 100% confidence between the drivers and the pit wall, we have to fix these things , or trust and perfect execution are easily lost."

Albon gave two different versions. “I think if we had stayed together a little longer, they would have told me to stay back, but during that time we were still able to compete. I think it was just a delay (in the warning) between the two cars.” To DAZN, Albon stated that he overtook Sainz “because he had run out of tires fighting with the Mercedes.” Later, he would show what really drove him when he overtook the Spaniard. “ This weekend I felt I had the pace to overtake the cars in front of Carlos.”

At the end of the race, the team and drivers reviewed the various communications, concluding that the strategy and messages to their drivers had not been well managed , but Sainz felt harmed, even more so given Jedda 's history, hence his great anger at the end.

The duel with the Ferraris

The Madrid native still had a tough time. The Ferraris were all over him after a Virtual Safety Car cut short their drivers' pit stop . Sainz regained the position from Leclerc, but another Virtual Safety Car disappeared just as the Madrid native was exposed to the Italian cars in the DRS zone.

To top it all off, Sainz failed to press a button to reactivate his pace, which ultimately left him exposed to Leclerc. He then failed to close the Monegasque at the finish line, and the latter ultimately spun away, allowing Hamilton to overtake both of them.

With hard tires and a longer lap time, Sainz tried to stay in touch with the Ferraris. All he could do was attempt a desperate bomb on Hamilton with the finish line in sight, and little chance of success. He had the whole weekend ahead of him, only to die on the beach in the final stages of the Miami GP. Upon reaching the finish line, James Vowles tried to calm his driver's anger. There was much talk behind the scenes.