Albon takes blame for first-lap Silverstone crash after tough Williams weekend

Alex Albon endured a frustrating Grand Prix on Sunday, retiring from the race after his afternoon was reduced to a test session following a first lap incident that left him needing a new front wing.

The reason his afternoon at Silverstone went wrong was fairly simple, a crash with Ollie Bearman’s Haas on the opening lap resulted in a pit stop for a new nose, leaving Albon at the back and off the pace.

When the Thai driver was handed a time penalty for causing the collision, he knew his race was effectively over – and Williams used the remaining laps to test out some of their upgrades.

"My mistake," Albon explained afterwards. "I think I had a bad start and locked up basically. It happens, unfortunately kind of ruined the race and then we started to box and test the new front wing out a little bit and do some stuff we wouldn’t normally have time to do on a normal race weekend.

"Sums up the season so far, yeah, just need a smooth one basically. This one was on me, this race, Lap 1 wasn’t good enough, but we’ll look to come back stronger."

Williams have been slow bringing upgrades to the car this season though they did bring some to Great Britain, with a new front wing the main component. Their bigger package is due soon.

As such, it made sense for the team to use Albon’s race to gather more data – and it's not the first time that has happened this year, with the 30-year-old now up to three DNF results and one DNS this season.

On the other side of the garage, Carlos Sainz came home 17th after a late unusual penalty dropped him back. He was outside the points either way, despite briefly running in the top 10 at the start of the race.

"Unfortunately, very good starts this year pretty much every race but we don’t have the pace to hold onto those positions," the Spaniard said post-race. "In the end, you always end up falling back to the place of the car in Quali, which is 14th, 15th.

"Disappointing day, disappointing weekend as we expected a lot more form this new package that we brought here."

The one positive for Sainz is his own form – something he is pleased with after the opening rounds. But that cannot take away from the fact that Williams, who topped the midfield last year, have rarely been in a position to fight for points in 2026.

"I am here to perform and I know I’m performing at a very high level this year in Qualifying and in the race, race starts, everything that is under my control. I think I am doing a pretty good job.

"But it is true in the long term, it starts being a bit frustrating because we are very far away from the points, very far away from the [Racing Bulls] which is a car in my opinion that this year we should have been targeting to beat.

"A lot to think about, a lot to consider, a lot of questions to be asked about how we are developing this car as in my mind we don’t seem to be finding any performance."