Carlos Sainz wraps up the first part of the season without scoring points in Hungary

Sunday, 26 July 2026:
- Race: P18, 68 laps

• Carlos Sainz finished eighteenth in the Hungarian GP, where he could not fight for points, even though for a while he could battle other cars that yesterday seemed to be unreachable.
• The Williams race driver gained a position at the start to move up to seventeenth and then he kept the Soft tyre alive for 18 laps trying to take advantage of any opportunity.
• An issue in the system responsible for displaying the blue flags on the steering wheel impeded him from noticing that a car on the lap of the leader was approaching him from behind; Carlos was fighting with Fernando Alonso at that time. As a result of that, he was given a 5-second penalty that he had to serve in his next pit-stop.
• He finished the race in eighteenth place, having done one more pit-stop than his teammate.

QUOTES:
“I was having a strong race today, racing with the Haas cars which were half a second quicker yesterday. There was an issue all race receiving information about blue flags and, during my battle with Fernando, Oscar appeared in my blind spot and unfortunately we made contact. The subsequent penalty and then double stacking during the VSC meant I lost some positions towards the last laps, but overall there wasn’t much more in it for us".

"Reflecting on this first half of the season, I'm happy with the consistency and pace I’m extracting from the car every weekend despite our struggles and, ultimately, we have a lot of homework for the second half of the year. The most important thing is to keep pushing together as a team like we are doing. We will reset during the summer break and come back stronger!".

COMING UP:
Dutch GP, Circuit Zandvoort – 21-23 August 2026