Carlos Sainz’s anger over Williams Miami GP team orders explained

It’s somehow appropriate that Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton should have banged wheels at the penultimate corner on the last lap of the Miami Grand Prix, because they were occupying a similar space elsewhere too.

Such was the length and volume, though, of Hamilton’s tirade against his team over the radio that Sainz’s similar angst went almost unnoticed at the time.

“Obviously, if I’m told on the radio that I’m not going to be attacked, that we’re going to push together,” he told reporters later. “Then to be overtaken, as a driver you always feel stupid, powerless.

“Because you’re playing the good guy, the same way that I played the good guy in Jeddah [when he dropped back to give Williams team-mate Alex Albon the benefit of DRS to stay clear of Isack Hadjar], and you get overtaken and you look completely stupid.”

Although the immediate cause of Sainz’s ire was Albon overtaking him when they had supposedly been ordered to hold positions, the roots went back to the previous day. There, owing to what Sainz described as “operational mistakes”, the team fitted his sole remaining set of new mediums during the chaotic wet-dry sprint race.

Sainz then rendered these beyond re-use by clipping the wall while hunting down Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin in the closing stages of the sprint.

So, while Williams enjoyed its best qualifying performance in recent history in Miami, with Sainz qualifying sixth and Albon seventh, Carlos was carrying inherent compromise into the race since Albon had one new set of mediums left for the start. This was exacerbated when Sainz accidentally clipped Albon’s right-rear just after the start, while swerving to avoid Lando Norris as the McLaren rejoined the track at Turn 2.

Albon moved ahead, apparently damage-free – photos taken by the team during the Virtual Safety Car period later confirmed this – while Sainz suffered extensive damage to the left-hand floor edge of his car, incurring a significant downforce penalty.

Sainz’s engineer Gaetan Jego told him “second car, remember what we discussed this morning”, which suggests a preordained arrangement to hold station after the first lap. But Albon began to struggle after the end of the VSC deployment and Sainz passed him with the assistance of DRS into Turn 11 on lap five.

Having got close enough to George Russell – who had started on hard-compound Pirellis and was finding them to be a handful – to complain about him moving under braking, Sainz found Albon looming large enough in his mirrors to be distracting. Feeling that defending position against his team-mate was costing him in the battle against Russell, Sainz began to lobby for an order to hold station.

“Let’s go forward, guys,” he said on the radio. “We’re compromising in the race here. Let’s get into our rhythm.”

At the same time Albon was suggesting to his engineer, James Urwin, that Sainz should get out of the way without actually couching it in those words: “What’s the plan here, because we’re just losing time?”

On lap 14 Urwin was telling Albon “we’re managing a water pressure issue with you, you need to maintain a gap of at least a second for the car ahead, short term” just as he was sailing past Sainz under DRS into Turn 11. This just after Jego had informed Sainz, “Alex has been instructed.”

Hence Sainz’s immediate complaint: “You told me he’d been told.”

“Let’s be the bigger one, OK?” was Jego’s final counter after further chuntering from his driver.

There was further friction between Sainz and the pitwall after Carlos felt he was told to back off too far after accidentally short-cutting the chicane while defending from Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari on lap 16. Sainz backed off immediately afterwards but was told to drop another three-tenths – something he felt was unnecessary.

He was also frustrated by losing places to Leclerc and Hamilton after the final VSC period, which perhaps accounts for the risky attempt to pass on Hamilton at the end of the race. Little wonder that, after Albon finished fifth while Sainz crossed the line ninth, the rancour continued.

“I know we were expecting to – hoping to – finish better but that was a strong race,” said Jego. “A lot of things to learn. Some things to discuss.”

“That’s not how I go racing, guys,” chided Sainz in response. “I don’t care. I’ve lost a lot of confidence here on everything.”

This prompted a ‘Carlos it’s James’ intervention from team principal James Vowles: “Yeah Carlos, noted. 

“We’ll discuss this in the room, but I agree with you we need proper engagement on it. For the time being well done for picking up points. You had damage to the car – we’ll take you through [it] – but well done for recovering as much as possible.”

In the aftermath, Albon confirmed that he didn’t receive the message to hold station until he was already in the process of passing Sainz. But that will provide little succour, given that opportunities to collect points will likely diminish given Williams has committed to pivoting towards 2026 car development early.

“I truly believe with a new tyre and no damage in the car, I would have been there in the fight for P5 also, given our starting position,” said Sainz. “So, a bit disappointed that we didn’t get to maximise that pace this weekend – but too many operational errors like I said.

“We will look back at it and see how we can improve, because next time we have this competitive car, I want to be the one maximising it.”