Williams verdict after Alex Albon's 'freak accident' taints 2026 F1 first for Carlos Sainz

Williams Formula 1 team boss James Vowles was left conflicted as 'bad luck' cost Alex Albon any running in sprint qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix, but Carlos Sainz delivered the team a first Q3 appearance of the season.

Albon struck the wall with the left-hand side of the car in practice one, after first sustaining damage from hitting an unfortunate marmot or groundhog that ran across the track with over half the session remaining.

On getting the FW48 back to the garage, the crew quickly realised that it would not be possible to ready it for sprint qualifying, as the power unit and gearbox both had to be swapped over, leaving Albon stranded with Liam Lawson – who also missed the session – at the back of the grid.

However, Williams was given a boost when the team made Q3 for the first time this year, with Carlos Sainz taking an eventual P10.

“First and foremost, I'm really happy with the team,” said Vowles when asked by Crash.net about the team’s mixed fortunes. “It's been another really great three weeks, where the team's worked relentlessly to bring performance to the car, and I hope you can see that translating in us moving forward and stepping into Q3 with Carlos.

“With Alex, I'm so disappointed for him, because he had the pace this weekend, he was on it, and it is just one of those freak accidents. I normally don't believe in bad luck. I don't know what other camp to put that in – it is just bad luck.

“And initially it didn't look that bad, but when we got the car back, there were issues; basically, the power unit, gearbox, suspension. And once you have enough down that line, you're done. That's pretty much; in a sprint weekend, that's not going to get back out again. We'll have him out, obviously, for the sprint race, and just keep learning.”

He added: “You're not going to score points from there, so I mean, less a test, but more let's actually just get a proper long run with him, because we didn't do that in FP1.”

In contrast, everything went to plan for Sainz.

“With Carlos, just lovely clean execution,” said Vowles. “I'm glad we're stepping forward. There's obviously still a hell of a lot to do to get back towards the front, but we're on a good pathway.”

Vowles said the recent run of upgrades – which continued with minor aerodynamic mods in Montreal – had contributed to the top 10 performance.

“A little bit of everything,” he said. “We have reduced the weight on the car, we've added a substantial aero package. So if I take Miami specifically, floor, bodywork, front wing modifications, modifications to the floor again that took place in Japan before then.

“And then between Japan and Miami, we had about 32 different work structures, one only was the aerodynamic package, all the other ones were how we're going to bring performance to the car.

“Here again, we've done more exhaust blowing, moved the exhaust into a different position as a result of it.

“Rear suspension improvements, quite a bit of that one is allowing us to run the car in a very different way, the one here allows us to have a much better balance through corner, for example.”

Vowles says the team is also optimising the PU more effectively: “Different ways of using the turbo, using the power unit fundamentally as well. We're still learning how to keep up, but we've done a much better job. If you look at where we were in Melbourne, there was a big offset between ourselves and the works team, and that's becoming smaller.

“Still not where I want it to be, but it is smaller now than it was before. So it is, as always in F1, never one silver bullet, but a whole bunch of them all coming together at the same time.”