Carlos Sainz has reflected on the error that saw him collide with his Williams team-mate Alex Albon late in the Dutch Grand Prix, conceding that it was “the last thing you want to do.” The contact ended Albon’s race after the team had enjoyed a genuine chance to end its run of five straight rounds without points.

“We’ve been scrapping for P15/P16 all weekend. The situation in the race put Alex on a fresher medium behind. I was struggling a lot already with my hard tyres towards the end of the race,” Sainz explained. “All of a sudden when I went to defend, a big lump in the braking into Turn 1 surprised me. I triggered a massive front lock and with that, obviously, I took Alex with me, which is the last thing you want to have done to a team-mate. Apologies for that, and we will move on as a team.”

Albon was unfazed about the collision, insisting it was not a repeat of the well-known Verstappen–Ricciardo clash in Baku. “It happens. It’s of luck for the team; obviously we apologised to Russell the team, but it’s not a Baku situation. We’ll review it for sure, but I think he just locked up. I kind of tried to avoid it as well but it had a damage, so we had to retire.”

TheWilliams man felt he had abundance it was a missed opportunity, noting he had been racing Fernando Alonso the whole day before the team’s early stop left him stagnant. “We were with Fernando the whole race and then he finished P9, so we need to understand what happened,” Albon said. “I know what went wrong — we pitted too early on the first stop and we came out behind a train of seven cars. I think we were afraid that Fernando was going to undercut us, but in pitting too early, we basically spent the second stint stuck behind a train. If we stayed above, we could’ve overcut the group behind. I really do think points were possible today, so it’s frustrating.