'Additional strategist' Carlos Sainz steered crucial Williams call

Williams F1 team principal James Vowles has revealed Carlos Sainz steered the team’s strategy after crashing out of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

Sainz suffered a disappointing start to his Williams career when he spun off and hit the wall on the first lap of Sunday’s chaotic and incident-packed season opener in Melbourne held in treacherous conditions.

But the former Ferrari driver then turned “additional strategist”, according to team boss Vowles, and pushed Williams to make the right call to switch back to intermediate tyres when a sudden heavy shower hit the track.

Sainz’s input helped teammate Alex Albon secure a brilliant fifth place, marking the team’s best result in a full grand prix distance since Lance Stroll finished on the podium at the 2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

“No result is the result of one person individually, it’s the result of the team performing,” Vowles told Sky Sports. “The pit stops were on point, the strategy, well done to them today.

“One point to note on the strategy is there was an additional strategist today, which was Carlos. Carlos’s insight was incredibly useful on that transition to the inter.

“You saw a number of teams not sure, ‘can we hang it out, do we hang it out?’. Carlos was adamant ‘you won’t survive on that in the last corners’ and he was spot on and helped drive us towards that.”

Vowles said Williams still need to investigate exactly what caused Sainz to crash out of his race debut for the team.

“It’s still slightly odd so we need to go through it more,” Vowles said.

“Effectively it was just an upshift but there was more torque than he would have expected at that point. It was tricky out there. A lot of white lines on the ground probably extenuated the issue.

“But you have to remember he is an expert driver. So it’s a fine line.”

Alex Albon hails Williams strategy

Albon praised Williams’ quick decision-making with regards to pulling off the well-timed switch to intermediates.

"I think as a team we really executed everything we did today," Albon said.

"First race it's not easy to be dialled in, in terms of strategy and approach to the weekend and we executed everything so well today to get that P4 [P5 after Kimi Antonelli penalty was reversed].

"It's just a fantastic start and it just shows we made a huge step from last year. These results, P4s, they're not going to come around very many times this year.

"We've talked a lot about capitalising early internally, in trying to make sure that we took advantage of rookie drivers and things like that to get those points quickly."