Report: Back to the Points in Baku
Carlos Sainz scored a top-10 finish for Atlassian Williams F1 Team in the 2026 Azerbaijan GP
Published
26 SEP 2026
Est. reading time
4 min
Carlos Sainz returned the Atlassian Williams Formula 1 Team to the points after a hard-fought P10 finish in the 2026 Azerbaijan GP, with Alex Albon ending his race on Lap 29. The result caps off a race weekend that saw the FW48 fare far more competitively after the team brought upgrades to Baku.
A solid getaway for Alex from P12 had him crowded out on the short run to Turn 1 and settling for remaining in position, but on the tail of Ollie Bearman. Carlos, meanwhile, started from P14 after a five-place penalty following Friday’s qualifying, and dropped two more places on the opening tour.
Alex’s fighting with Bearman continued in the early laps, with the two exchanging P11 across the first sector before the Haas driver managed to open a gap to end the fight. Bearman soon passed Liam Lawson, and the Racing Bulls driver instead became Alex’s target as he juggled his pace with extending the life of his Soft tyres.
Carlos’ first laps had Nico Hulkenberg as his primary rival, passing the Audi driver on Lap 3, but soon returning to P16 as the low-starting Kimi Antonelli slipped by on his recover drive.
Hulkenberg turned that to P17 on Lap 9, and his teammate Gabriel Bortoleto also tried his luck, forcing Carlos to defend for consecutive laps before losing out at Turn 1.
Swapping tyres with the first stop of anyone left Carlos in clear air on Softs. Meanwhile, Alex had the opposite, remaining close to Lawson ahead while Esteban Ocon behind closed in.
The pressure from the Haas continued over multiple laps, with Alex doing well to defend on his ageing tyres. Unfortunately a lock up at Turn 5 resulted in a slide to the barriers, and his race ended on Lap 31.
A Safety Car slowdown to clear Alex’s car was the trigger for the field to take their pit stops, with Carlos among them to switch to a second set of Softs. P12 fell into Carlos’ lap on the restart as five cars tangled at Turn 1. Our No.55 deftly avoided any incident and he now faced the remaining laps on the cusp of points.
The second restart went green without incident, and Carlos just needed to close in on Hulkenberg for a point after Oscar Piastri ran wide at Turn 1 to fall to the back. And closing in was exactly what Carlos did, with him passing Hulkenberg down the pit straight on Lap 49 to take P10, where he would finish the race two laps later.
James Vowles, Team Principal
"Well done to the team. It's been a mammoth effort to bring the update that we have here this weekend and it's nice to walk away with a point, a singular point, but a point all the same, in what was a very topsy-turvy weekend and race. Well done to Carlos. You can see we didn't have the pace on that first stint, and we need to dig and understand that because that was a critical part of the race where we weren't able to make progress. With Alex really well done as he held onto that starting position; just unfortunately a late brake combined with a wind gust ended his afternoon. But Carlos was there and ready to pick up points. We've got the first of a triple header done now; there’s lots to do in front of us but it's nice that we've now got a package that's at least in the mix. Let's see what we can do over the next few races."
Carlos Sainz
"I'm happy to get a point after yesterday’s penalty and I think the team deserved it. It was a difficult race, but we had a good restart after the safety car, doing a good job with tyre management and managed to get into the points towards the end of the race. These upgrades are a good sign of progress, but we know it’ll take a bit more to get in the points regularly. Hopefully we’ll be able to have a bit more fun fighting in the midfield for the remaining races."
Alex Albon
"It was a weird crash if I'm honest. I braked a little bit later than the previous lap and there was a big wind gust which caught us out a little bit. When I had my moment, I thought I would lock up and run a bit wide; I never thought I was going to hit the wall. We'll look at the data. In terms of the update, I think it's exactly the step we expected. It's put us in a midfield fight. If you roll back to the start of the year the car was delayed and it was overweight. We had to start a project to make a new chassis and delivered it on time and on weight and that is a huge difference to eight months ago. Hopefully now this is a turning point, and we can explore this update more in Malaysia."
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