Sainz shrugs off Hadjar’s jab and doubles down on Williams’ tyre mystery: ‘Cheeky, not mean’
Carlos Sainz isn’t in the mood for paddock theatre. After a spiky qualifying flashpoint at Monza with Racing Bulls rookie Isack Hadjar, the Williams driver has pushed back on claims he was playing games. In Sainz’s telling, the chaos the cameras picked up in Q1 wasn’t a mind game — it was a man trying to light up tyres that don’t always want to wake up.
Hadjar was furious after missing the cut in Q1 at the Italian Grand Prix, accusing Sainz of “wrecking” his out-lap rhythm and setting him up to fail before the final push. The Spaniard, who joined Williams for 2025 after his Ferrari tenure, didn’t bite. He says he was sprinting through his own pre-lap routine because, right now, that’s the only way to keep the blue car in the fight on Saturdays.
“You’re fighting for your life in those last minutes of Q1,” Sainz said in the build-up to Baku. “Everyone’s nervous, everyone’s trying to sort themselves out. Drivers can be a bit cheeky — but not mean.”
It’s a subtle distinction, and one that matters to Sainz. He insists he wasn’t trying to bait Hadjar into a mistake or nick a tow. He’d already decided he wasn’t going to open his flyer ahead of the Frenchman. The intention, he says, was simpler: hit the run plan, get the tyre in the window, give himself a shot.
“I think Isack misread what I was doing,” Sainz added. “I wasn’t playing with him. I was pushing to get my own out-lap right and make it to the front.”
That granular focus on out-laps tells you plenty about Williams’ season. Pace-wise, Sainz and Alex Albon feel the FW47 has a decent baseline — quick enough most weekends, with a known weak spot in long, medium-speed corners. The headache is the rubber. New softs don’t always bring the happy balance you’d expect; sometimes they even make the car slower than it is on a used medium. It’s perverse, and it’s costing them when it matters most: the first timed lap in qualifying.
“It’s puzzling how much we’ve struggled,” Sainz admitted. “Sometimes it’s tyre prep, sometimes it’s the balance a new tyre gives the car. Even when the tyre is working, the first lap doesn’t deliver what it should. They’re two different problems that meet in the same place — not extracting maximum on that opening lap of a soft.”
For a driver who has built his reputation on method and feel, that unpredictability grates. The margins in Q1 are knife-edge; if your prep lap is compromised — by traffic, an out-of-sync run plan, or a compound that just won’t bite — you’re on the bubble. That’s how out-laps turn feral and egos get bruised. Monza’s slipstream games only amplify the mess.
None of this means Williams is lost. Underneath the tyre noise is a car both drivers say they understand. The team’s peak looks better than its trough, and the Sunday pace has often been kinder than the grid slot suggests. But top-end points start with clean Saturdays, and Williams knows it can’t keep leaving easy time on the garage floor.
The Sainz–Albon dynamic is also worth a line. It’s been cooperative and competitive in equal measure — and that’s healthy. Both speak the same language about the Williams’ strengths and weaknesses, which should speed up the diagnosis. The tricky bit is turning a temperamental first-lap tyre into a predictable tool when you get one shot under pressure.
Baku is a good stress test. The out-lap there is part science, part street brawl: long straights to bleed temperature out of the surface, fiddly corners to build it back in, a tow that can make or break a lap, and walls that punish the slightest hesitation. If Williams has found answers, you’ll see it in how confidently Sainz and Albon commit to their first flyers.
As for the Hadjar spat, don’t expect Sainz to carry it forward. He’s not interested in scoring points in the pen. He knows the only way out of this is to qualify cleaner and race freer. In his world, that means less noise, more grip, and a car that reacts to a new soft like it’s supposed to.
Until then, expect him to keep hustling on those out-laps. Cheeky? Sometimes. Mean? Not his style.
