Sainz and Albon frustrated by Williams' qualifying day at Monte Carlo
Despite their promising performance earlier during the weekend, Williams driver Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon suffered a disappointing qualifying session, lamenting their car's ability of switching on Pirelli's tyres.
Williams looked quick on Saturday, and they aimed to get both cars into Q3, but a gamble on the mediums in Q2 did not pay off with the timing of the red flags.
Although they swapped to softs for the closing stages of Q2, and Albon could make it through, his team-mate Carlos Sainz tumbled out after complaining of a lack of rear grip.
"Frustrating day," started Albon. "I think my Q2 lap was half a second quicker than my Q3, so we need to understand why. We were in a really good rhythm from FP1 to FP3 and then in Qualifying it seemed that the tyres were not working properly throughout, and they were inconsistent.
"With that Q2 lap I thought we finally got it to work then we lost grip again in Q3. Even though it’s a two-stop it’s still going to be a managed race to some extent so it will be interesting," said the Thai driver.
Having used Pirelli's mediums at the start of Q2, Carlos Sainz looked fairly competitive on the yellow-banded rubber. However, when he bolted on a set of softs for the closing stages of Q2, he was unable to find the grip and ended up only 11th on the grid.
"My weekend has been challenging from the beginning, never finding a sweet spot with the car. Despite that, I had enough pace to go into Q3 but for some reason the Soft tyre on our car felt a bit like a lottery and in Q2 we clearly didn’t switch it on, which meant we had no grip at all.
"It’s frustrating, but I think that tomorrow we might have an interesting race with the mandatory two-stops. We’ll try to make the most out of it," concluded the Spaniard.
Expanding on Williams' performance in qualifying, team boss James Vowles said: "Today was all about tyres. We didn’t have them working the right way with Carlos in Q2 or with Alex at the end of Q3.
"There is lots to learn and understand but that won’t apply tomorrow. The main element now is working on how we move forward with the new two-stop regulations in the race and I’m confident the car is still quick.
