REPORT: Sprint grid set in São Paulo

The grid is set for Saturday’s Sprint race in São Paulo, with Alex Albon starting from P12 and Carlos Sainz lining up P20 after a tricky opening day for the team.

Having completed a full race distance between both cars in the only practice session of the weekend – finishing FP1 in P8 with Carlos and P12 with Alex – Atlassian Williams Racing went into Sprint Qualifying with solid data to hand.

Unfortunately, only one of our FW47s, this weekend decked out in Gulf colours, would make it through the first phase.

Alex improved on his final tour to progress in P11, while a compromised out-lap for Carlos left him on the back foot as he began his final push. A lock-up at the first corner meant he couldn’t find the time needed, leaving him P20 for the 24-lap Sprint.

In SQ2, Alex dropped into the 1:09s for the first time this weekend, putting a 1:09.813 on the board to sit P12 with one more push attempt. However, second-push improvements in SQ2 were few and far between, and Alex couldn’t find any more time.

"I think we knew we were going to struggle a bit at this circuit," Alex reflected. "There's a lot of lap time just in getting the balance of the car right, but I don't know if it's totally achievable.

"I don't know if it's a little bit more fundamental in the car, however we'll try and fix it between the Sprint and qualifying tomorrow. It was tricky but I don't think we're in a bad place.

"The positives are that we improved the car a lot from practice to Sprint qualifying, and we're heading in the right direction.

Carlos added: "We simply didn’t do a good Sprint qualifying today. My first run was messy with traffic and getting the tyres up to temperature but the second run we made our life more difficult and almost didn’t get two laps in.

"Ultimately, I finish this session not knowing the limit or performance of the car, so it’s not ideal. Looking at FP1, I know there was more in it, so we’ll learn from today and hopefully execute a better session tomorrow."