Report: Points scored in China

The first 2026 points in a race of split fortunes for Atlassian Williams F1 Team

Published

15 MAR 2026

Est. reading time

4 min

Atlassian Williams F1 Team took the first two points of our 2026 campaign after Carlos Sainz secured a P9 finish in the 2026 Chinese Grand Prix.

For Alex Albon, however, a mechanical issue left him unable to start Sunday’s Grand Prix. The team identified a hydraulic issue on Alex’s car during laps to grid.

Despite the team’s efforts to fix the issue, it was not possible, and we were forced to retire the car.

For Carlos, though, his P17 grid slot only had 13 cars ahead of him with both McLaren cars and Gabriel Bortoleto joining Alex on the DNS list.

Further positions came our No.55’s way on the opening, too, with Carlos reaching P10 after the first tour of the Shanghai International Circuit.

That dropped to P13, however, with Max Verstappen, Ollie Bearman, and Nico Hulkenberg making their way past the FW48 in the opening laps as Carlos complained about tyre graining on his medium tyres.

An early pit stop to counter that on Lap 10 saw a switch to Hards, but an on-track stoppage for Lance Stroll one lap later saw a Safety Car slowdown allowing our rivals to take a cheaper tyre change.

With racing resuming on Lap 13, Carlos went green flag racing in P14 with most runners stopping.

Isack Hadjar was the next fight for our remaining car to concentrate on, and the Red Bull passed by, letting Carlos concentrate on his own pace to eke the Hards for the remaining laps.

P12 came as Esteban Ocon pitted and Arvid Lindblad spun, but the top 10 soon arrived once the remaining drivers ahead without a mandatory pit stop, Hulkenberg and Franco Colapinto, dived in to change rubber.

The final laps were a game of mirror checking as Colapinto inched closer following his pit stop, looking to take the final point away from Carlos.

That changed on lap 45, however, when Red Bull instructed Verstappen to retire the car, turning Carlos and Colapinto’s battle into a P9 vs P10 scrap instead.

Carlos held on, though, eventually crossing the line 0.7s ahead of the Argentinian driver to secure our first top-10 finish of 2026.

“Carlos, well done,” came the celebratory message from James Vowles. “That is really an incredibly strong drive.

“We will come back stronger, the car will get better from here onwards.

“It’s good to be on the board with points. Really, really well done.”

Carlos replied by saying, “Yeah, thank you! Let’s hope this serves as a little bit of motivation for everyone to dig deep now. Let’s push.”

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James Vowles, Team Principal

“Incredible drive from Carlos to bring the car home and secure our first points of the season. Well done to him. He was faultless from start to finish and deserved those points today. With Alex we suffered a hydraulic issue on the laps to grid which meant that ultimately the car was unable to start the race. We clearly aspire to be more. “We know we're not where the car needs to be performance-wise and we have plans across the next few months to remedy that. We know what we need to do reliability-wise and those are items that we need to get on top of with immediate effect because we have two top drivers and I believe both could have been in the points today."

Carlos Sainz

“It feels good to get some points here in China thanks to a strong start, effective tyre management and good defending at the end of the race against Colapinto. We know we’re not in a position to score points on pure pace at this point in the season, but we got everything else right today and that's what made the difference. “We need to be proud of maximising everything and I hope that these points bring motivation to the entire team, here at the track and back in Grove. Everyone is making a huge effort and we need to keep digging deep over the next few weeks to bring more performance to the car. Vamos!”

Alex Albon

“There’s not much to take away from today as on the laps to grid we identified a hydraulic problem that resulted in me not being able to start the race. We were hoping we might be able to get back on track at some point to get some laps in and shake down the car again before Japan, but unfortunately we couldn’t fix the problem in time. “We need to go through our issues and feedback with a fine tooth comb and we need to understand our reliability problems in able to find more performance. As a team it’s important to separate what’s in our control and what’s not and we need to pull together for Japan in just two weeks time. The silver lining is that Carlos was able to bag a few points for the team today, and a big congrats to Kimi on his first win.”

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