Positive Friday for Carlos Sainz with some experimental work in Mexico

Friday, 30 October 2026:

- Free Practice 1: P16, 1:20.006, 31 laps

- Free Practice 2: P17, 1:19.248, 28 laps

• Beyond the seventeenth fastest time of the day, Carlos Sainz feels good about the progress that he has been able to notice on his FW48 across both Friday practice sessions as he wraps up the first day of the weekend.
• The Williams race driver covered 14 laps on Medium tyres and 17 on Hards in Free Practice 1, whereas in Free Practice 2 he worked exclusively with two sets of the Soft compound.
• The Spanish driver was just a tenth short of a hypothetical Q2. Now he will work together with his team to further optimise his car for tomorrow’s Qualifying.

QUOTES:

“Overall it’s been a decent Friday. We changed some items between FP1 and FP2 which I could feel clearly in the car and they were a step in the right direction. We’re using these sessions as an opportunity to try some more experimental setups. Tonight we’ll evaluate what we can do with the car for the rest of the weekend and hope we can make some more steps forward for tomorrow”.

COMING UP:

Saturday, 31 October 2026:

- Free Practice 3: 11:30 local time (18:30 CET)

- Qualifying: 15:00 local time (22:00 CET)