Sainz “very happy” after achieving the main objective in his first qualifying with Williams

Having made the jump from Ferrari to Williams, four-time F1 race winner Carlos Sainz said that he is very happy after the Grove-based outfit achieved its main objective in the first qualifying session of the season.

Ahead of his first race with Williams, Carlos Sainz delivered a great performance in qualifying, continuing his impressive form from pre-season testing. However, the Madrid-born driver acknowledged that he failed to extract the maximum performance in the final stages of qualifying, suggesting that he will still need to discover the characteristics of his new car.

"First of all, I’m very happy for the entire team, for Alex and for myself. It’s my first Qualifying with Williams and we have achieved our main objective of getting into Q3 with both cars.

"The hard work that everyone has done during the winter has paid off with a great step forward and I’m proud of the team. On my side, I had a bit of a scrappy Qualifying to be honest. However, I’m not concerned.

"There are many things that I still need to understand from this car and I’m sure better laps will come soon! Tomorrow, under rain, I will also have to adapt quickly but I’m excited about the race. We will try to maximise every opportunity. This is only the beginning!

His new team-mate Alex Albon appeared to struggle for pace in the earlier part of the weekend, but he suddenly began to display a much better performance in qualifying.

The London-born driver indicated that Williams might expect an even bigger performance jump in race trim as the Grove-based outfit focused on improving the race performance of its car rather than maximizing its outright pace.

“We were aiming for top ten, so P6 is fantastic and I’m very happy. We have a great car, easy to drive, predictable; it feels like a much more driveable car this year. It’s really tight out there and it’s going to be a dogfight in the midfield this year, but this is a great place for us to start.

“It also feels like Qualifying is not even the best bit of the car; where we’ve made the biggest improvement is the race pace. We’ve done some big things back at Grove. We have paid attention to this year, we are starting on the right weight and we are in a much healthier place than we were this time last year.

“When I look at where we were a year ago up to now, we’re in a completely different position. I’m very proud of the team today and there are good vibes. We’re expecting rain tomorrow and nobody has done a lap on the Intermediate or Wet tyre so let’s see what happens."

Williams team boss James Vowles was understandably delighted with the result, but he conceded that he was slightly disappointed as Sainz could not extract everything he had shown in the earlier part of the weekend.

“What a fantastic day for the team. I’m really pleased for Alex, he put in a really great lap out there and delivered when it mattered. I’m disappointed for Carlos – we know there is more in it but ultimately, we weren’t clean on execution.

“The great news is it’s a good place to start, the weather coming in tomorrow will provide plenty of opportunity and the team has renewed energy. “