Carlos Sainz might have only completed less than a lap of the Australian Grand Prix under green-flag conditions, but he helped Williams team-mate Alex Albon beat both Ferraris to the finish.
Sainz started from 10th but spun off at the final corner after the safety car was deployed in response to Jack Doohan spinning his Alpine into the barrier earlier on the opening lap.
Rather than head to the airport, though, Sainz joined the engineers in monitoring Albon’s progress. From sixth on the grid, Albon spent the early running on a drying track in seventh, behind the Racing Bulls car of Yuki Tsunoda but ahead of Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari.
Albon pitted for slicks on lap 33, the same time as Tsunoda and Hamilton, and they emerged in the same order. When the rain returned on lap 44 of 57, all teams faced a difficult decision: whether or not to pit again for intermediates, given that the radar indicated the cloudburst would be short.
Albon was the third driver into the pits after race leader Lando Norris and Mercedes’ George Russell, and Sainz’s input was critical to that timing.
“The pitstops were absolutely on point, the strategy – well done to them,” Williams boss James Vowles told Sky Sports F1. “One point to note on the strategy is that we had an additional strategist today, which was Carlos.
“Carlos, his insight was incredibly useful on that transition to the inter. You saw a number of teams – ‘We’re not sure, do we try and hang it out?’ and Carlos was adamant: ‘You won’t survive on that in the last few corners’. And he was spot on. He helped drive us towards that.”
In contrast, Ferrari instructed both its drivers to stay out. Tsunoda also braved it out on slicks for another three laps.
Conditions quickly proved Sainz correct. Having gained a spot before his stop thanks to Oscar Piastri’s spin, Albon rose another two places at the expense of Charles Leclerc and Tsunoda when Ferrari and Racing Bulls capitulated to the conditions.
Albon then held fourth until Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli overtook him with two laps to go.
But it still wasn't the Williams debut that Sainz had hoped for, after joining from Ferrari over the winter. Vowles put his crash down to the characteristics of the gearbox mapping while running in safety car mode.
“It’s slightly odd, so we have to go through it more,” he added. “Effectively it was an upshift on part-throttle, but there was more torque than he would have expected at that point.”
