Barcelona GP: Atlassian Williams F1 struggle in qualifying
By Williams F1 Team
June 13 2026
After a difficult set of practice sessions for the 2026 Barcelona-Catalunya GP the Atlassian Williams F1 Team would see their lack of performance continue in the qualifying session. It was very much another difficult session with Carlos Sainz finishing 16th and Alex Albon 18th after having not made it past Q1. Both drivers were able to do their best in terms of getting their performances from the difficult FW48. Alex continued to fall behind Carlos something that the team needs to figure out the reasons for. Unfortunately the issues that the team and drivers have being suffering were somehting that the team was aware of. Sundays race is going to be a difficult time for the team with any prospect for points being very limited.
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Atlassian Williams F1 Team
Barcelona-Catalunya GP Qualifying Review |
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Alex Albon:
"It's been a difficult weekend, more so than it should have been.
The balance has felt completely disconnected - we were sliding a lot,
fighting both axles, and every time I went into a corner it felt
different. There was no rhythm and no real consistency in laps to build
on, which is disappointing because we knew this track would be a
challenge, but not fully to this extent. Carlos managed to find a bit
more than I did in qualifying, so we'll look at that data tonight and
try to understand what was going wrong. On pure pace, points aren't
really on the table tomorrow, but there is high tyre deg here so there
will be plenty of pit stops and a lot of different strategies in play." |
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Carlos Sainz:
"We maximised everything we had today and reached our target of
getting into Q2, which is an honest reflection of where we are at this
track. We used all our new tyres in Q1 which left us with not much more
to extract in Q2, so improving P16 was not possible.
"We’ll be
going into tomorrow with a fresh mindset as we know anything can happen
here. On pure pace, points aren’t on the table, but this track is hard
on everyone’s machinery and strategy can make a big difference. We'll be
ready to take any opportunity that comes. It's been a tricky weekend so
far, but feeling the support of the Spanish fans has been incredible.
I'll give them everything I have tomorrow." |
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James Vowles Team Principal:
"We knew this would be a difficult weekend coming here, and
unfortunately that has proven to be the case. We haven’t been good in
Barcelona for the last few years, and despite large changes to the
regulations that remains the case, so we need to dig deeper to
understand the issues. We know the car is still not on the weight limit,
and in these very warm temperatures that has an extraordinarily large
impact on the performance, but that’s not all of it and over the next
few weeks and months we need to find all of it because it will impact us
at other circuits. Well done to both Alex and Carlos for doing their
utmost with the package we have here today. We have sacrificed
qualifying for the race and kept a strong allocation of tyres, so let’s
see what opportunities arise." |
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Circuit de
Barcelona-Catalunya, Spain |
Lap Length: 4.657km |
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Pos |
Driver |
Team |
Q1 |
Q2 |
Q3 |
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| 16 |
C Sainz |
Williams Racing |
1:16.881 |
1:17.827 |
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18 |
A Albon |
Williams Racing |
1:17.424 |
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