Carlos Sainz questions FIA treatment of Williams after latest controversy

Carlos Sainz has once again complained about himself and Williams being on the wrong end of some 'bad luck' from the FIA of late.

The Spaniard, a prominent figure on the grid and director of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, was already wound up by the reaction to a 'human error' in sprint qualifying last weekend before being set off by another moment in grand prix qualifying.

Sainz had previously complained that if the error which caused 'overtake mode' to be unavailable for the second half of sprint qualifying had impacted a big-name driver as much as it had impacted him (he finished the session dead last), moves would have been made to redress the balance somewhat.

He was further irritated by what he saw as a double standard when Nico Hulkenberg wasn't penalised for what he was as an impeding incident in Saturday's grand prix qualifying session, comparing it to what he saw as a similar incident which saw him penalised in Madrid.

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Sainz: Williams and I seem to be getting all the bad luck

“I don’t know what’s going on with the FIA this year," he told DAZN, "because Williams and I in particular seem to be getting all the bad luck.

"Having to do Q1 of the sprint without power, then yesterday, when they clearly got in my way on a lap and weren’t penalised, whereas in Madrid I was given a three-place grid penalty without them thinking twice about it, and the five-place penalty for the yellow flag in Baku, when I did lift off..."

The 2026 season has been a tough one for Sainz and his team, although he has signed a massive contract to stick around with James Vowles and co. at least through 2027.

Sainz's complaints about overtake mode 'error'

Speaking earlier in the race weekend about the bizarre situation in sprint qualifying, he said: "We had a really poor lap there. We only got one lap, and we had some issues with the brakes in FP1. We had to change them for FP1. We were having some brakes issues still, and yeah, had a few lockups, struggling a lot with with that and with the tyres.

"But on top of that, half of the cars did the the lap with half-a-second quicker engine than the others. There was another software issue with the cars this time around, and we were on the bad end of it.

"And for whatever reason, the FIA, like in Malaysia, didn't decide to do sport in equity, and were happy to do half of the quali with the cars with a higher power than than the other half of the cars, so a bit confused why the sport keeps doing different things depending on who is out in Q1 or who is out in lap one."

He added: "Well, I mean, first of all, we did the whole lap with with a half a second less power than any other lap of the weekend, so that's never gonna help. But with all the issues that we had on the brakes and tyres in that quali, we would have always struggled to get through."

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