Carlos Sainz began his Sunday in Baku with a setback: a five-place grid penalty dropped him from ninth to fourteenth before the race started. Stewards imposed the penalty after ruling that he had not slowed enough for a yellow flag in Q3. That is standard procedure, information from official Formula 1 and FIA reports. Sainz could have faded into the midfield. He didn’t.
Williams brought upgrades to the FW48. For the first time this season, the car looked competitive on a track that suited its strengths. Sainz found himself in the thick of the midfield, fighting the Audi cars and taking every chance as the laps ticked by. The safety car bunched up the field, allowing him to close the gap to the cars ahead. Then Alpine and Norris collided, and Sainz seized his opening.
Along with the grid drop, Sainz received two penalty points on his FIA super licence for the yellow-flag incident, increasing his disciplinary risk for the season. The team and independent F1 analysts highlighted Williams’ upgrades as a basic factor in its improved competitiveness in Baku. Sainz described his Q3 appearance as an overachievement given the car’s true performance level.
“I’m happy to score a point after the disappointment of Friday and in such a tough race,” Sainz said. He credited the Williams team for its work on the new package. “We didn’t give up, I got everything out of that last stint and managed to bring home a point for the team, which is the least we deserved after all the work this weekend.” The official Williams team report confirmed that the point ended a rough run for the team in Baku. It felt like a reward for the team’s recent development push.
The race proved complicated. Sainz said the car’s pace was inconsistent and did not match what he had felt in earlier sessions. “It wasn’t easy, I had a complicated race in terms of rhythm. The pace from Thursday and Friday wasn’t there and we need to analyze why. But even with less pace, we managed a very good restart after the safety car, overtook several cars by being smart, and got a point in this situation. Still, we need to review the pace because I wasn’t happy throughout the race.” The FIA’s official race classification placed Sainz 10th. He finished more than 32 seconds behind winner George Russell. A fierce midfield fight, not raw speed, delivered that point.
Tyre management was another headache. Sainz pointed out how tricky these cars are on a street circuit like Baku, where grip is hard to find and tyre temperatures swing quickly. “It’s quite easy to make mistakes with these cars given the speed differences and how dirty the racing line is here, plus how quickly the tyres cool down. We don’t have tyres soft enough for this kind of circuit, especially with all the power these cars have. So I’m not excusing Franco (Colapinto), because anyone can make that kind of mistake, but this year it’s especially easy to get it wrong.”
This is Sainz’s fourth scoring finish of 2026, following ninth-place finishes in China and Miami. He also finished ninth in Canada. Tenth in Azerbaijan lifts him to seventeenth in the standings with seven points. Every point counts in a year like this. As reported earlier, Sainz’s knack for squeezing results from tough weekends has become his trademark.
Williams’ upgrades have made a difference, though the team remains locked in a tight midfield fight with razor-thin margins. Sainz’s Baku lead showed the importance of ability to recover and tactical sense in Formula 1.
