Williams boss, James Vowles insists that Alex Albon did not ignore team orders in Miami.
In the aftermath of last Sunday’s race, at a time much of the focus was on Lewis Hamilton’s feisty radio exchanges with his team, those of Carlos Sainz slipped under the radar.
Under the impression that their positions were to be maintained, Sainz was caught off guard when his teammate, Alex Albon, suddenly overtook him on Lap 14 to claim sixth.
The Spaniard, who has finally found his feet at his new team after suffering a disappointing start to the season, was already unhappy after Saturday’s Sprint when the team mistakenly fitted his sole remaining set of new mediums during the chaos that resulted from the mixed conditions.
Adding insult to injury Sainz subsequently damaged the set when he clouted the wall whilst battling Lance Stroll.
Though he out-qualified his teammate, the Spaniard went into the race still feeling miffed as Albon still had a set of new mediums to call on.
Sainz’ mood was not helped by the first lap clash with Albon as they tried to avoid Lando Norris following his off in Turn 1 and his subsequent attempt to rejoin the track.
Though both drivers had been told to maintain position at the end of the opening lap, when Albon began to struggle at the end of the VSC period Sainz passed him. The Spaniard then began hunting down George Russell but subsequently found himself under attack from Albon.
“Let’s go forward, guys,” Sainz told his team. “We’re compromising in the race here. Let’s get into our rhythm.”
“What’s the plan here, because we’re just losing time?” was his teammate’s reaction.
On Lap 14 Albon was told: “We’re managing a water pressure issue with you, you need to maintain a gap of at least a second for the car ahead.
However, courtesy of DRS, the Thai driver passed his teammate.
“You told me he’d been told,” said Sainz.
Later in the race, the Spaniard was further frustrated when he was told to back off while under attack from Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, subsequently being passed by both drivers at the end of the second VSC period.
A somewhat kamikaze move on Hamilton to rescue eighth place failed and Sainz was lucky to escape punishment for causing a collision.
“That’s not how I go racing, guys,” said Sainz in the moments after the chequered flag. “I don’t care. I’ve lost a lot of confidence here on everything.”
“A message was communicated to both race engineers, effectively that Alex had a reliability problem and we needed to get some air into the radiators,” explains James Vowles in the latest debrief from the Grove outfit. “That was communicated to both with the decision of just making a little gap between the cars for the time being to make sure we do that.
“However, that message wasn’t clear in its construct,” he added. “It wasn’t even clear on whether overtaking was possible or not.
“The primary function is getting the car cool to move forward,” he continued, adding that though Sainz had been assured that he was safe and that Albon had been told to maintain position, this came after the Thai driver had made his move.
“To Alex that same message was communicated that he isn’t to overtake Carlos, but only once his DRS was open and he was effectively alongside Carlos completing the overtake,” said Vowles. “So this isn’t Alex going against team orders,” he insisted, “this is on us as a team as an organisation to significantly tighten up how we communicate to the engineers and how quickly we communicate to the drivers.
“What I can assure everyone is it simply won’t happen again,” he vowed.
Despite all that, Vowles admits due to the (first lap) damage to Sainz’ car, the team would have called on the Spaniard to yield to his faster teammate.
“Even once we had stabilised them, we more than likely would have very quickly inverted the cars,” said the Briton. “The reason behind that is Carlos had sustained damage from that lap one incident and it was getting worse and worse. We could see the floor was deteriorating, that’s part of the reason why Alex was getting closer and closer to him and able to re-overtake. The loss was really mounting into a couple of tenths by this point.
“So it’s more than likely we would have done that, but again that would be a team decision rather than a driver not expecting to be attacked.”
