Report: A difficult Saturday in Melbourne

Alex will line up P15, whilst issues for Carlos kept him sidelined for most of the day

Published

07 MAR 2026

Est. reading time

3 min

Atlassian Williams F1 Team had a difficult first qualifying Saturday of the season in Melbourne, with only one car able to set a lap when the time came to race the stopwatch.

Carlos Sainz’s FW48 suffered a loss of power as he was finishing his opening lap of FP3, stopping at pit entry and unable to get going again.

Alex would continue as our sole representative in the final practice hour, ultimately finishing it in P17.

Fast forward to qualifying and despite the team's best efforts to get the car ready, Carlos was unable to compete following that FP3 issue.

Alex would make it through an interrupted Q1, with his best of 1:21.051 placing him P13.

Progressing to Q3 always looked tough, with the FW48 yet to place inside the top 10 this weekend.

Our Thai racer’s provisional 1:20.941 had him P15 going into his final attempt, but an excursion across the grass at the first corner ended any hopes of improving.

It will be P15 and P21 for our duo as we get set to push forward and see what Sunday brings.

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James Vowles, Team Principal:

“We haven't had a clean weekend at all, with only one car competing in qualifying following some power unit reliability issues. We know we are on the back foot and our winter has been difficult but we have a clear understanding of where we need to improve - and fast - and there are already programmes under way to achieve those goals. Our plan for tomorrow is to get both cars to the finish so we can build on the learning we have here and take it into Shanghai next weekend. Congratulations to Mercedes on the P1 and P2 today - that's the benchmark, and it gives us something to aim for."

Alex Albon

“We maximised as much as we could today after we've struggled with some reliability issues this weekend. We were limited in some practice sessions, so to make it into Q2 was a decent result. There is a lot of work to do and it's not an overnight fix, but we’ll keep pushing and look to solve the reliability issues and limitations we’ve identified. For tomorrow I think we can expect some chaos, especially at the start, and not many teams have been able to do proper long runs due to red flags across the weekend, so it could be interesting. From our position we want a little bit of chaos, and we’ll look to keep it clean and take advantage of any opportunities in the race."

Carlos Sainz

“It’s been a very difficult weekend filled with reliability issues across each of the sessions. It’s unfortunate because we seemed to have no issues during both tests, so to come here and only do FP1 and the beginning of FP2, ultimately missing both sessions today, is frustrating. Hopefully tomorrow we can go racing and gather some experience and good learnings, as we’re already on the back foot.”

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