There is discord at Williams after an internal team overtaking maneuver that, according to Carlos Sainz, should never have happened
Carlos Sainz was visibly unhappy with Williams and his teammate Alexander Albon after the 2025 Miami Grand Prix. Albon had overtaken him in a direct duel after about half an hour, while Sainz had assumed there was a “non-aggression pact.”
“When I’m told on the radio that I won’t be attacked and that we’re pushing together to avoid being overtaken, as a driver you always feel stupid and powerless,” said Sainz.
He himself had suggested on the radio that the team duel be defused, saying, “Let’s work our way forward, guys. We’re just hurting our race here.” Behind the two Williams cars of Sainz and Albon, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc was positioning himself to attack.
This is how the radio communication went at Williams
But while Sainz tried to calm the situation down, Albon did exactly the opposite in the sister car: he pushed for team orders in his favor, saying over the radio: “What’s going on? We’re just losing time!”
Sainz, who was unaware of this, asked Alex for “a little help” shortly afterwards. His engineer assured him: “He’s got the info.”
But what Williams radioed to Albon was something completely different: “We’ve got a water pressure problem here. You need to leave at least a second gap to the car in front. Sorry. This is only temporary.”
Albon reacted irritably: “I’m trying to overtake him.” And shortly afterwards, he was past Sainz. This in turn irritated Sainz: “You told me he had been informed!”
The Williams team did not respond, but radioed back: “Okay, let’s be smart. Concentrate! Try to be clever and stay with him.”
Sainz complained again: “Come on!” Then the engineer: “I know, I know. Let’s show some class here, okay?” And then the race continued.
Later, Sainz said, visibly annoyed: “You play the good guy, just like I did in Jeddah, and then you get overtaken and look completely stupid.”
How Albon experienced the situation
Albon sees things differently and points out that the decisive radio message only reached him “at the moment I overtook him.” “I think if we had stayed in the pack a little longer, I would have received the message. But at that point, we were still allowed to drive freely.” The radio messages were simply “delayed.”
Sainz wants to address this after the Miami Grand Prix: “We’ll talk about it,” he says. Then Sainz is diplomatic: “I’m sure we’ll grow as a team. And then we’ll move on.”
Sainz at a disadvantage from the start
But first there is a lot to discuss at Williams, because there were problems with Sainz even before the Grand Prix. He speaks of “some operational errors” that forced him to start the Grand Prix on used tires. “Everyone around me had fresh tires. So I knew I would be at a disadvantage by a few tenths in the first stint.”
After the incident with Albon, he ‘gave it his all’ to stay with Albon and keep Leclerc behind him. The fact that his pursuers benefited from the virtual safety car phase and saved time during the pit stop put him under additional pressure.
Despite “great battles” with the Ferrari drivers, he ultimately had to let Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton pull away. “Due to damage to the car, I couldn’t keep up because of the lack of downforce,” explained Sainz. “The pace on the hard tire compound was basically okay, but there was just too much going on around me.”
While Sainz took two points in ninth place, Albon finished fifth behind world champion Max Verstappen in the Red Bull and scored ten championship points. He said: “Once I found my rhythm, we were really fast.”
