Report: No points scored in 2026 Belgian GP
Atlassian Williams F1 Team finished P15 and P16 after 44 laps of Spa-Francorchamps
Published
19 JUL 2026
Est. reading time
4 min
An interrupted Belgian Grand Prix netted no points for the team after Alex Albon led Carlos Sainz over the line in P15 and P16, respectively.
The two Atlassian Williams F1 Team drivers ran close by the chequered flag in a day of limited progress, but with entertaining battles for both throughout the race.
Each FW48 picked up positions over the first tour of the iconic Spa-Francorchamps circuit, with Alex excelling from his grid spot on his medium tyres to jump from P15 to P12 by the end of Lap 1.
Carlos, starting from P19 after the team elected to take new power unit components, took off on his soft tyres to reach P16 after passing Valtteri Bottas and others fell back.
One of those others was George Russell, who found himself in the wall at Les Combes to trigger an opening lap safety car.
An eventful lap 1 also saw Carlos pick up minor front wing damage after he tapped the rear of Esteban Ocon’s Haas at Turn 1 to lose some front grip.
With several cars pitting during the early appearance of Bernd Maylander, Carlos battled Nico Hulkenberg for P13 once the green flags waved, but could not pass the German driver.
Alex, too, had fights with the sister Audi of Gabriel Bortoleto, but the Brazilian soon opened a gap that had Albono fall out of overtake mode availability, leaving him vulnerable to attacks.
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Isack Hadjar, starting from the back, passed Carlos, then Alex in quick succession, with Hulkenberg taking the opportunity to slipstream past, too, to drop our No.23 to P14.
With the Audi fights finished, our next battles began with the Haas duo, as Ollie Bearman went wheel-to-wheel with Carlos over P15.
Passing and re-passing for position kept our Spanish racer busy, but with his soft tyres fading and front wing damage impacting performance, a pit stop soon followed Bearman’s completed overtake.
A double-helping of Virtual Safety Car appearances for debris on track might’ve helped our fortunes a little.
However, Carlos had already pitted and Alex reached the pit entry just as the green flag waved for his stop, and he filtered out in P14, with Carlos P17 once all the slowdowns and stops concluded.
The remaining laps saw Bearman and Ocon keeping the Carbono duo busy, with Ocon falling to Carlos on Lap 25, while Bearman fought by Alex on Lap 27.
Ten seconds was the gap between the two FW48s after the pit stops, and Carlos reduced that to 1.2s by the chequered flag, but we ultimately did not have the pace to fight for points today.
Carlos ran with Lap 1 front wing damage until his pit stop
Alex Albon:
“It was a frustrating day today. We had a good start, and you begin to think you can keep up with the midfield, but our pace just dropped away. We've had a super clean weekend and had stronger pace up until qualifying, where we made some changes that impacted our race pace today, leaving us with quite a slow car. We know other teams are progressing much faster than us and our Baku upgrade likely won't close this gap, but we'll do what we can to find more performance.”
Carlos Sainz:
“It was a race of two halves today. We had to start P19 after a penalty due to changing the ESME and got some damage to the front wing in the first lap when everyone bunched up into turn 1. Changing the front wing cost us additional time, but with the new wing, the car was in a much better place, and I had good pace until the end of the race, overtaking some rivals and closing the gap to the cars ahead.
“Ultimately, we extracted everything we could from the car. While we know the gap is increasing to the midfield and our upgrades coming won’t completely fill this, we’ve got some good learnings we can take forward. On to Hungary.”
James Vowles:
“We got the most out of the car that we could today. Carlos got caught up in a lap 1 incident, which unfortunately cost quite a bit in terms of performance. We were able to rectify that with a front wing change at the stop, which proved to be the right decision, enabling him to come back and fight in the second half of the race.
“With Alex, it was a solid performance all weekend and he didn't put a foot wrong. We know we've fallen back relative to the field. There's a long way to go in the season, and the key is to make sure that we rectify the mistakes we suffered across the winter, so that we can continue to add performance to the car.
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