Report: Sprint and qualifying complete in Zandvoort
Alex Albon will start Sunday's Dutch Grand Prix from P16, with Carlos Sainz alongside on the grid in P17, after a wet-and-dry Saturday
Published
22 AUG 2026
Est. reading time
4 min
Zandvoort delivered its first-ever Sprint on Saturday, and it turned into a real test of nerve as rain arrived in the closing laps. Carlos Sainz started from the pit lane after set-up changes were made to his FW48 overnight, while Alex Albon lined up P16 for the 24-lap dash.
Alex made a clean start and gained a place on Hulkenberg, but stayed P16 as Bearman came through on soft tyres. Carlos ran his own race further back, picking off Hulkenberg on the pit straight by Lap 4 to move up to P20, before backing off mid-race to run in clear air and gather data on a weekend where track time has been valuable.
As the laps ticked down, the rain that had been forecast finally arrived. Alex held off both Aston Martins in tricky, wet conditions to secure P16, while Carlos brought his car home in P20.
With the Sprint result banked, focus turned to Sunday's Grand Prix. Both cars went into Q1 sixth and seventh in the queue, with Carlos setting the first time on the board at 1:14.733 to Alex's 1:14.884.
Second runs saw both drivers move forward. Alex up to P14 on a 1:13.835, Carlos to P16 on a 1:13.972, before a third set of softs was called for as the session tightened. It came down to the wire: Alex advanced in P16 with a 1:13.552, while Carlos was eliminated in P17, just 0.022s away from his team-mate's cutoff time.
With his session over, Alex headed back out on the soft tyres he'd ended Q1 on before switching to a fresh set for one final attempt. He found 0.75s on that last push – not enough to move further up the order, but enough for a satisfying way to end the session.
Alex will start Sunday's Dutch Grand Prix from P16, with Carlos starting P17.
James Vowles, Team Principal:
"It was a great lap from Alex in Q2. That’s all the car had in it today, but it's good to see him across this weekend, really extracting everything we could. With Carlos, just really on the back foot from those first few laps in FP1, but he did a great job today to bring the car back to somewhere sensible with just a few milliseconds between him and Alex. It was also good to see us close the gap to the front of the field. Still much larger than we want it to be, but generally in the right direction. We've saved some tyres for tomorrow's race, which I think will also be very helpful, and hopefully, weather will come into play, and we can take every opportunity that comes our way."
Alex Albon:
“I'm happy with that Q2 lap; we made a few changes that worked between the Sprint and qualifying, so the balance was better, but we're still struggling with pure downforce. I don't think I quite extracted the maximum in Q1, but I definitely did in Q2, and it's probably the most complete lap I've done in a while. We got into more of a rhythm today and were more consistent with our laps, so at least we got one Haas and both Astons behind us for tomorrow. We still need to understand why our starting setup was so far out, because that's something we can build on. With a better setup, maybe we can look after our tyres better too - that's going to matter tomorrow as the deg was high in the Sprint. Overtaking is trickier around Zandvoort, so I'm expecting some tyre games in the race and multiple stops. Let's see what Sunday brings."
Carlos Sainz:
“Sprint weekends don’t leave much time to root out problems and we used the Sprint Race pretty much as a practice session, where we tried different things to improve the balance. This afternoon the car was feeling better and the changes we’ve done made it more comfortable to drive. My lap felt decent and we missed out on Q2 by a very thin margin. Tomorrow we’ll try our best to put everything together and execute a clean race to extract the maximum of our car and see where that takes us."
Make your best guess!
Play our free game. Climb the global leaderboard, or join private and public groups!
Play Now
Earn WClub points
Latest
Trending
© 2026 The Williams Group, under licence to Williams IP Holdings LLC
Williams Grand Prix Engineering Services LLP, a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales with company registration number OC456938 and whose registered address is at Station Road, Grove, Wantage, Oxfordshire, OX12 0DQ.
Powered By