Carlos Sainz: Our task is to break through the peloton

      Both Williams drivers scored points in Saturday’s sprint in Austin, so James Vowles is very pleased, and his joy is not even overshadowed by the fact that Alex Albon failed to make it into the second part of qualifying due to a track limits infringement.

      James Vowles, team principal: “A wonderful day for our team, as we scored another 9 points, and both drivers contributed to that. It was the first sprint in which we managed to get on the podium, and I’m proud of that.

      It’s also good that Carlos will start tomorrow’s Grand Prix from ninth. I think he’ll have the opportunity to move forward. In Alex’s case we’ve had differential problems on his car all weekend, and despite that he had a great sprint and finished sixth.

      The team did a great job on his car before qualifying, and the changes that were made were positive in nature, however the chassis balance changed noticeably.

      The car’s behavior became less predictable, and that led to Alex not being able to fully unlock the FW47’s potential. But I’m confident that overall the car is effective, and he will be able to make up positions.”

      Carlos Sainz (9th): “It was another successful day, and I’m pleased with how qualifying went. We executed cleanly, and the car was capable of a strong pace, but unfortunately the wind picked up for the final session and it became harder to drive.

      That said, ninth place is broadly in line with our performance. I’m in a confident mood ahead of tomorrow’s race, and I hope to put on a show that gives these wonderful fans another reason to cheer!

      Our job is to fight our way forward through the pack. I hope we can keep up with the cars starting from higher positions. And the ultimate goal is to score as many points for the team as possible, so we’ll be focusing on the race.”

      Alex Albon (19th): “The day started fairly normally, we had a good sprint, avoided trouble, gained a few positions and picked up a few points.

      Already on Friday we found that my car had differential problems, and before the sprint we couldn’t make setup changes in time, so in qualifying the car had completely different settings and balance.

      Now we need to analyze the telemetry data in detail, but I felt that the understeer was more pronounced than usual. Overall the changes were the right ones, but we should have worked on the setup for longer, and there was no time left for that.

      It’s a shame that my final quick lap was deleted due to going off track, as we should have at least made it into the second session. We’ll see how tomorrow unfolds.”