Italian GP: Challenging Qualifying for Williams Racing


By Williams Racing
September 7 2025

Coming into qualifying for the 2025 Italian GP the Atlassian Williams Racing Team had a degree of optimism based on their Friday performances but once again both Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon would suffer from their inability to get their soft tyres to work in the qualifying format, as compared to that they could do during pracice sessions. Both would make it into Q2 but for Alex it was a close called thing finishing 15th. Carlos would finish further up the times but in Q2 both drivers would struggle getting the best from their soft tyres. Carlos would finish in 13th and Alex 14th, not the result the team was hoping for. Both drivers would have moments, including running wide and brake lockups, as they pushed their cars beyond their limits. Despite everything that both drivers and the team threw at the soft tyre problem they could not come up with a solution to the issue. But despite their qualifying issues both Carlos and Alex are far more confident about their pace for Sunday's race.

 
 Atlassian Williams Racing Italian GP Qualifying Review
 
Albon
 
Albon

Alex Albon:
"It's a frustrating result, as it's the same issue of getting the tyres to work. We tried absolutely everything this weekend, so we need to go back to the drawing board. We have a good car here, which you see in Free Practice when we can do some more things with outlaps and cool laps, but our issues come in Qualifying when it matters. Carlos showed in Q1 a glimpse of our true pace and where I think we belong. It will be a one-stop here, so we’ll need clean air and to be careful with degradation. As easy as this track looks to overtake, it's actually quite difficult and the DRS train is usually an issue here. We're not where we want to be but tomorrow, we will work together and see what we can do."

Sainz

Carlos Sainz:
"We expected today to be a lot more challenging. We’ve been struggling all season with our single lap pace on the Soft compound, being very tricky to get them into the optimum window and feeling like every push lap is different from each other. However, I have faith on our race pace, and I will give absolutely everything out there to get into the points. Let’s race!"

 

James Vowles Team Principal:
"It is great to see the sport so healthy, with less than four tenths separating 15 cars in Q2. We had shown in Q1 that we can get the tyres to work but it’s not the same as everyone else, and I think today we didn’t quite get the programme right. Even then I think we had the pace to just about get into Q3, but not much more, which is different to how we have been over the rest of the weekend. We now go into the race swinging; we don’t have much to lose, and we have a fast car from Friday, so let’s use that to the best of our ability and get some points to our name."

 
Sainz
 
Albon
 
Autodromo Nazionale Monza Italy Lap Length: 5.793km
Pos Driver Team Q1 Q2 Q3
13 C Sainz Williams Racing 1:19.644  1:19.528 -
14 A Albon Williams Racing 1:19.816 1:19.583 -
 
Sainz
 

Bookmark or share this story with: