Carlos Sainz has voiced harsh criticism of the new 2026 regulations after a dramatic race weekend in Melbourne. The Spaniard experienced one of the toughest weekends of his career with Williams, after a series of technical problems gave him hardly any track time and the car’s weaknesses became painfully visible. Afterwards, he drew a clear conclusion: “This is not the right formula.”
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An ERS failure already ruined a large part of his free practice sessions, after which Sainz was also unable to set a serious time in qualifying. The race also remained a struggle for the Madrilenian. Due to problems with the front wing, he had to drive a large part of the race with minimal downforce and was lapped twice. “I had to drive thirty laps at a snail’s pace without front downforce,” he sighed afterwards. “After that, we stopped and changed the front wing to see if I could still learn something about the car on soft tires. I am lagging far behind in learning these new regulations because I missed so many sessions.” The four-time race winner eventually finished fifteenth.
‘New F1 regulations don’t seem to work’
According to Sainz, Williams is still at the beginning of a long development trajectory. “The car isn’t there yet, it’s not ready to fight for points. We have many reliability issues, it’s too heavy, we don’t have enough downforce,” he summed up. “We must improve in every area.” With this, he painted a bleak picture of the start of the season, in which the team still seems far removed from the midfield battle.
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Sainz also took aim at the new F1 regulations. “The feeling is bad,” he said when asked how it felt to race with the new generation of cars for the first time. “The start was dangerous with many cars having problems, and in the first lap, with the active aerodynamics and the slipstream, it was very dangerous. Safety must always come first, and it wasn’t the safest first lap.” As director of the GPDA, he went a step further: “This sport is called Formula 1. The formula that was thought to be good for the sport is not the right one and must be changed. Distributing power equally between the battery and the engine doesn’t seem to work for F1 races; nobody is happy with it.”
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Read everything about the Australian GP here
