Carlos Sainz: I am very pleased with the progress we have made.

      In qualifying in Bahrain, Carlos Sainz not only beat his teammate for the first time this season, but was the only Williams driver to qualify for the finals. Alex Albon starts from 15th position, but this is only due to penalties received by his rivals, but in fact he was eliminated from the fight already in the first session.

      Carlos Sainz (8th): "I made it to the qualifying final, and on the one hand, I'm happy about it, but on the other hand, I'm not completely happy. I am very pleased with the progress we have made, the steps we are taking, and I am pleased that I managed to drive some good laps today.

      We've been steadily improving over the course of qualifying, and I'm getting a better understanding of the features of the Williams car, but that doesn't mean that all qualifying will be like this. At least we were able to find a more effective approach, which, of course, helped us.

      We need to keep working, persevere, and move forward step by step. We will continue to experiment with the settings on different tracks, change something in the driving style, and gradually this will allow us to reach the desired level.

      Our main task for tomorrow is to focus on our race. Lewis Hamilton and Yuki Tsunoda are starting behind me, and their cars are clearly faster than our FW47. It is quite possible to overtake on this track, and when the car generates more downforce, like Ferrari and Red Bull, it allows you to take better care of the rubber.

      They will be able to get ahead of me at some point, but the upcoming race is very important to me because I need to understand the behavior of the car on the track, where a significant load falls on the rear tires. "

      Alex Albon (15th): "We still have to figure out the reasons for what happened. We were supposed to hit the track four minutes before the end of the session, but I lost almost three of them in the pit lane queue. A traffic jam formed there, and during the time that I stood there, the temperature of the rubber managed to decrease by about 25-30 degrees.

      After that, I had to start the lap on time, and on the lap out of the pits I had to overtake three cars. But because of the cold rubber, there was no grip in Turn 1 - unfortunately, that's how it turned out. We usually act very clearly during qualifying, but today we completely failed.

      If we talk about tomorrow's race, our car is one of the best in the middle of the peloton in terms of speed capabilities – besides, it's quite possible to overtake on this track. It won't be easy to score points, but it's still possible, and I'll try to give my best to recoup what happened today."