REPORT: Signs of Speed in Sakhir Quali

A fourth successive Q3 appearance for the FW47 came at the Bahrain International Circuit as Carlos Sainz qualified P8 for Sunday's race.

That gives Atlassian Williams Racing another great chance to fight for points from inside the point-scoring positions.

Sainz's 1:30.680 was his best lap in Qualifying, as the Spaniard found his groove in Sakhir through all three sections under the lights, comfortably making it to top 10.

For Alex, it was the first time in 2025 that he didn't reach Q3, and a P16 in Q1 had our No23 fail to progress from the first 18 minutes of qualifying.

That later became a P15 as a track limits violation demoted Nico Hülkenberg below, but the decision arrived too late for both FW47s to contest Q2.

Issues with braking hampered Albono in FP3, and that trickiness continued into Qualifying.

He set a 1:32.040 on his second Q1 effort, going four-tenths faster than his opening attempt, but it wasn't enough this time around.

Gaetan Jego, Carlos' race engineer, let his driver know the result, saying, "P8. You beat Hamilton and Tsunoda. Good job, mate. Good job."

"Okay. Not bad," was the reply from Carlos, something that James Vowles swiftly corrected:

"It's better than not bad, Carlos! Well done. Really, really nice, cleanly executed qualifying.

"Just stepping it up each time. Looking forward to tomorrow. Well done."

Carlos agreed and said "Yeah, that's what I need right now. So, thank you, James. It's coming little by little, step by step.

"Agreed," said James. "I said we'd do this together."

Speaking after Qualifying, Carlos shared: "It seems like we made a step in the right direction, but we need to keep our heads down and carry on trying different things. I feel I still have margin for improvement, and I want to be higher than P8!

"Having said that, I’m happy with today and I definitely felt more in control, knowing where to push, where there is potential lap time, and staying disciplined with my driving.

"I’m confident in what we are doing, the speed is there, and I have a great team around me, so I just need to stick to my plan and continue taking the right steps, starting with the race tomorrow and trying to score some points!"

Alex began his Saturday reflection by stating: "It was messy today. We spent about three minutes waiting for all the other cars to go past us, stuck in the pit exit traffic jam, which equates to about 25-30 degrees of tyre temperature lost.

"When that happens, you end up going into Turn 1 with no grip. I had to overtake three cars on my outlap to make the flag. That’s just the way it is, unfortunately. Normally we are very good at getting out there, but today we slipped up.

"As for tomorrow, we have some of the strongest race pace in the midfield and at least you can overtake on this track! It’s going to be tricky to score points, but it is possible and I will give it everything to recover from what happened today."

Wrapping our Saturday reaction, Team Principal James Vowles shared: "It’s great to see Carlos up into Q3. He’s progressing every race weekend and there’s more to come from him.

"In terms of Alex, it was a disappointing session. As a team, we didn’t execute leaving the garage as cleanly as we did on Carlos’ side, and it resulted in Alex being at the back of the queue, unable to do the outlap he wanted. He has the pace, we’ve seen it every race weekend so far this year, and he is able to get the car into Q3. I have no doubt that would have been the same today.

"On the positive side, he is very quick, and it’s a track where we can overtake and make a difference strategically. I’m looking forward to working with him on the race tomorrow in order to get both cars up into the points."