Carlos Sainz fought back from a five-place grid penalty to grab a single point in Azerbaijan. Williams’ new upgrades gave him the edge he needed to make the most of a chaotic race and keep his 2026 tally alive.
Carlos Sainz started his Sunday in Baku with a problem. A five-place grid penalty pushed him from ninth to fourteenth before the race even began. The penalty came after stewards ruled he did not slow down enough for a yellow flag in Q3. That’s standard procedure, according to 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 played to its strengths. Sainz found himself in the thick of the midfield. He fought the Audi cars. He grabbed every chance as the laps ticked by. The safety car changed everything. It bunched up the field. Sainz closed the gap to the cars ahead. Then chaos hit. Alpine and Norris collided. Sainz saw his opening and took it.
In addition to 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.
“I’m happy to score a point after the disappointment of Friday and in such a tough race,” Sainz said. He gave credit to the Williams team for their 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 this point ended a rough run for the team in Baku. It felt like a reward for their recent push in development.
The race was anything but simple. Sainz admitted the car’s pace was up and down. It didn’t match what he 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.” FIA’s official race classification put Sainz in 10th place. He finished more than 32 seconds behind George Russell, who won. That single point came from a wild midfield fight, not raw speed.
Tyre management was another headache. Sainz pointed out how tricky these cars are on a street circuit like Baku. Grip is hard to find. Tyre temperatures swing fast. “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.”
Williams’ upgrades were highlighted by both the team and independent F1 analysts as a key factor in their improved competitiveness in Baku, with Sainz himself describing his Q3 appearance as an overachievement given the car’s true performance level.
This point is Sainz’s fourth scoring finish of 2026. He adds it to his ninth places in China, Miami, and Canada. Tenth in Azerbaijan lifts him to seventeenth in the standings with seven points. It’s not much, but 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. The team is still locked in a tight midfield fight. Margins are razor-thin. Quick thinking matters. Sainz’s Baku drive shows how much resilience and tactical sense matter in Formula 1 now. The lesson is simple. In a season where the midfield is wild, you have to grab every chance. Survival depends on it.
