Australian GP: Strategist Carlos Sainz aided Williams on key call for Alex Albon

MELBOURNE — Carlos Sainz played a key role in helping Alex Albon score Williams a feel-good fifth place finish at the Australian Grand Prix.

With a late rain shower plunging the race into chaos Albon was pitted at a perfect moment, making the switch from dry to wet tyres.

After the race James Vowles said Albon’s new teammate Sainz, who had crashed out of the race under a safety car period on Lap 2, had helped the team make the decision.

“The pitstops were absolutely on point, the strategy — well done to them,” Vowles said. “One point to note on the strategy is that we had an additional strategist today, which was Carlos.

“His insight was incredibly useful on that transition to the inter. You saw a number of teams — ‘We’re not sure, do we try and hang it out?’ and Carlos was adamant: ‘You won’t survive on that in the last few corners.’ And he was spot on. He helped drive us towards that.”

Not everyone had the same foresight. Sainz’s former team Ferrari appeared to squander this key moment, with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton both tumbling down the order. Racing Bulls driver Yuki Tsunoda also dropped from a promising position after staying out too long.

Albon turned in a masterful drive to record Williams’ best full-race result since Lance Stroll’s podium at the 2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Previously George Russell finished second for Williams at the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix but the race was shortened to 20 laps due to heavy rain.

Albon praised his team’s strategy after the race. “I think as a team we really executed everything we did today,” he said.

“First race it’s not easy to be dialled in, in terms of strategy and approach to the weekend and we executed everything so well today to get that P4” he said. Albon was later demoted to fifth after Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s penalty was overturned.

“It’s just a fantastic start and it just shows we made a huge step from last year. These results, P4s, they’re not going to come around very many times this year.

“We’ve talked a lot about capitalising early internally, in trying to make sure that we took advantage of rookie drivers and things like that to get those points quickly.”

Source: espn.com