Sainz explains the reasons for his shock exit in Q1

Having endured a shock Q1 exit in qualifying at the Austrian Grand Prix, Williams driver Carlos Sainz has revealed that he suffered brake issues in the grid-deciding session at the Red Bull Ring which was then made even worse by damage to the floor of his FW47.

Williams has lacked pace at the Red Bull Ring from the start of the weekend, and they continued to struggle for performance in qualifying. Alexander Albon still made a great effort to make it into Q2, but he failed to make further progress from there.

His team-mate Carlos Sainz endured even worse fortunes in qualifying. The Spaniard had no pace in the first segment of qualifying, and will start the Spielberg race from P19.

Explaining his issues in qualifying, Sainz confirmed that Williams had subsequently spotted brake issues which was then made even worse by damage to the floor of his car.

“There’s damage in the car, for sure. The car is undriveable. When I say undriveable, it’s pulling under braking, no load in high-speed. Undriveable.”

“We’ve just seen that we had quite a bit of damage on the floor, so we were lacking quite a lot of downforce. We also had an issue with the brakes from the start of Quali, so too many things going to on to actually push around a high-confidence track like this.”

The Spaniard continued: "A frustrating Qualifying. We had a brake issue from the start of the session which was making the car pull massively to one side and I ended up picking up floor damage which made the car undriveable.

"Overall, we need to pull together as a team and review what’s causing this run of form in Qualifying and on the Soft tyre. For tomorrow, we seemed to have good race pace yesterday so I will give it all to recover and get into the points," concluded Sainz.