REPORT: Quali Complete at Silverstone

One of the tightest Qualifying sessions for the British Grand Prix saw Carlos Sainz end the session in P11, with Alex Albon one row back in P14.

The two Atlassian Williams Racing drivers showed encouraging speed around the Silverstone circuit, and mere tenths separated us from another Q3 appearance.

Carlos ended the session having set a 1:25.746, only 0.035s from the top-10 shootout, with Alex's 1:25.889 a little over a tenth behind.

Changes to the power units on both cars showed signs of decent pace in FP3, where Alex ended the session in P7 a little ahead of Carlos' P12 in a session that saw two late red flag stoppages.

That speed continued into Qualifying, where a further red flag halted our efforts in Q1 as Franco Colapinto retired after a trip through the gravel.

Nonetheless, Alex set a 1:26.093 in the opening segment of Qualifying for P4, with Carlos' 1:26.175 good enough for P8 as just five tenths separated the 15 drivers who reached Q2.

Q2 began with solid laps from our duo, and Carbono sat P4 and P5 after the first runs concluded.

Both drivers slipped down the order as others found speed, and Alex could not improve on his second attempt, while a late push from our rivals narrowly demoted Carlos to P11.

Speaking after the session ended, Carlos said, "I don’t think there was much more for us out there today.

"I missed Q3 by the slightest of margins, but this weekend we’ve been consistently running in the gap between P10 and P14, so I think our position is representative of where we are.

"We’ve been dedicating this weekend to a lot of set-up experimentation, so it hasn’t been the ideal build-up to Qualifying, but in the end, my lap felt really clean.

"I have trust in our race pace tomorrow, so we’ll do our best to fight for those points and be ready to take any opportunities.

"It’s incredible the amount of support we have at home, and I want to thank our fans with a good race!"

Alex reflected on his Saturday by saying, "We need to review what happened today.

"We put on new tyres after Franco crashed, then went out when a Red Flag was likely coming, so we ultimately wasted a set.

"That left us on used tyres for our first Q2 run, which actually went well, but we had a compromised second run.

"We’ve been quick all weekend, so it’s frustrating. The car is getting faster and should’ve been in Q3.

"I’m not saying I’m happy with my job in Q2, but we’re not always making it easy for ourselves.

"We’re always focusing on improving things at Williams, so it’s days like this that highlight areas for us to work on."

James Vowles, Atlassian Williams Racing's Team Principal, shared his Qualifying thoughts after our day concluded:

"The field is very close now. You can see that a matter of milliseconds is still separating four or five cars, and we always knew getting into Q3 would be a gigantic effort for both cars.

"With Carlos, I think we ran a good programme. He drove well and he's managed to improve a few areas on the car.

"With Alex, we started the outlap a little bit close to Verstappen, so we weren't able to get the right temperature in the tyres, and he was compromised in his first sector.

"Without that, it’s difficult to say exactly where he would have ended up, but certainly ahead of where we start on the grid.

"That said, we have a fast race car based on Friday and every opportunity to race in the points with both cars tomorrow."