Carlos Sainz and Williams suffer expected difficulties in Hungary

Friday, 24 July 2026:
- Free Practice 1: P20, 1:23.734, 23 laps
- Free Practice 2: P17, 1:21.442, 31 laps

• Challenging Friday for Carlos Sainz at the Hungaroring, where he confirmed that this racetrack is especially tough with the characteristics of his Williams FW48.
• The Spanish race driver used the three tyre compounds available for the weekend: he used the Soft one in both sessions, put 18 laps on the Medium in Free Practice 1 and 24 laps on the Hard rubber on Free Practice 2.
• Carlos finished the day half a second behind the theoretical Q1 cut. He will work with his engineers tonight to see how they can further optimize the set-up of his car for the rest of the weekend.

QUOTES:
“Tricky Friday in Hungary as expected. This track exposes our main weaknesses, and we are struggling to find the right balance in the car. We’ll use the weekend to explore different setup directions and see how we can improve at tracks like this where we know we’re lacking. The rest of this weekend will be about collecting valuable data and extracting as much performance as we can from this package".

COMING UP:
Saturday, 25 July 2026
- Free Practice 3: 12:30 local time (12:30 CEST)
- Qualifying: 16:00 local time (16:00 CEST)