REPORT: Storming Drive Secures Point in Singapore

Atlassian Williams Racing have secured their first point in Singapore since 2017 after a magnificent drive from Carlos Sainz to take P10. Alex Albon also enjoyed a late charge to P14 having initially started in the pit lane.

It was a clean opening tour of the Marina Bay Street Circuit, and our duo settled into their opening stint from P18 and P20. We began to climb the order as drivers ahead made their first stops.

In an uncharacteristically clean Singapore Grand Prix, we continued to extend our opening stint, circulating as two of the four cars yet to stop past the midpoint.

When Alex came in to stop on Lap 43, he fell from P12 to P20, fitting the Softs for a late charge.

Carlos kept his Mediums alive until Lap 51, and dropped from P9 to P15 as he too put on the Softs to take to the finish – from here on out it was move upon move.

Alex would make his way up to P14, whilst Carlos gave himself a fighting chance of a point – a result that looked almost impossible the night prior.

However, on lap 58, Carlos sailed past Isack Hadjar to claim P10 – a remarkable gain of eight positions on an evening of minimal attrition.

“Given the circumstances, we need to be happy and proud about our performance today,” Carlos reflected.

“It was a straightforward race with no safety cars, but we still managed to progress through the field and grab a valuable point starting from P18.

“We were able to extend our medium tyre longer than anybody else into the race and once I put the softs on, I was able to do a very fast stint and some strong overtakes on track.

“We could’ve been fighting higher up the field today but all in all I’m very happy with our race execution. We’ll take the learnings and start preparing for the upcoming races.” Alex Albon added: “Starting from the pit lane today we knew it was going to be a bit of a test session for us.

“We did a test setup just for some learnings and it didn’t really work, but that’s okay as we can use that data for future races. We had good pace when we were in clean air, we just got caught up in some blue flags and were stuck in traffic for majority of the race.

“Even when we did have fresher tyres, we had to wait for the car in front to catch the cars further up, so it was just one of those races where we couldn’t do much, especially with no safety cars.

“There were a lot of learnings from this weekend, and we will look to tidy everything up for the next weekend out in Austin.”

Concluding our reaction, James Vowles said: “Congratulations to Carlos on a really strong drive to achieve a point today, and thank you to Alex for working closely on strategy to achieve that result - it really was a team game.

“We couldn't have achieved more from our starting position, but that only reiterates my disappointment about our qualifying disqualification because we had a quick car today.

“I'm looking forward to the remaining six rounds of the season, because we have a competitive car and we're here to fight for our position in the Championship.

“Finally, congratulations to McLaren for retaining the Constructors' Championship – their journey back to the top is an inspiration to us and the benchmark for what we want to achieve.”