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The Spielberg circuit in Austria – the Red Bull Ring – with its 71 laps, with expected temperatures of above 30ºC and some of the softest Pirelli compounds, was going to be a challenge for the Williams’ car.

On Thursday, Carlos warned that Wiliams wasn’t bringing any upgrades. Every other team except them and Aston Martin had some sort of improvement package. Both Spanish drivers even questioned the value of the budget cap rules since the top teams seem to keep benefitting and the middle field keeps struggling

Carlos: «We have some coming over the next few races and that should improve the situation. Although, we know, fundantaly, even if we have upgrades coming, the car has some serious things taht we need to improve for the future». – F1

On Friday, Luke Browning drove Carlos’ car on FP1 finishing P18 as parto of the rookies’ driver program and on FP2 Carlos also finished P18. He struggled with deployment issues, a light rear wing feeling, a lack of boost on the exist of all the corners and no battery speed onto turn 3.

Carlos: «Missing the first Free Practice session is never ideal, but Luke did a good job for the team. Unfortunately, we’re way off the pace, and we need to find more performance tonight if we want to have a chance of making it to Q2». – F1

On Saturday, Carlos finished FP3 in P17 reporting better conditions and less issues but going wide a couple of times. Carlos said on the radio: «The car still feels a bit overbalance. Feeling with tyres turn 1 wasn’t the best». Meanwhile Gaetan, his race engineer, answered: «We still see that we are overbalance on map. We can get it (fixed) before the (next) session». Later after the race he admitted to have found something with the team that helped improve the pace.

In Qualifying, Carlos ended up in P17, out of Q2 by 0.021s, but out-qualifying his teammate by 0,257s, a trend that keeps going through this 2026 season.

Happy with his lap, Carlos said: «I was on the limit of all the high speed corners, really, really on the edge, very happy the last lap try. A little bit of all out to see if we could make it through to Q2. Unfortunately, we were not quick enough. The overweight, the heat, the lack of downforce, there’s no secrets you can go up and down with the set up and in the end you always struggle with the same things. Hopefully tomorrow should be one of the last tough days for us before we bring a good package for Silverstone».

On Sunday, Carlos started on a soft tyre, a bold strategy compared to every other contender. Later, on the medium, compared to his teammate he had way better pace. However, it soon ended when after an electrical issue, he had to retire the car in Lap 23.

He overtook Colapinto in the first lap, battled the Haas team and Hulkenberg for the rest of the race. He boxed opposite Bearman with a pitstop time of 2.6 seconds (a big iimprovement after a long season of slow stops).

Carlos after the DNF: «(We were) having a better race than expected – with much better pace than I’d had all weekend – I was battling with cars I hadn’t expected to be battling with: the Audis, the Alpines, the Haas cars. I was holding my own against them, so, well, I’m more reassured by that – by the pace. (But) at the end of the day, there’s nop reliability either, no pace, no car capable of scoring points, so we’ll just have to wait and see if thing actually improve for us».

About the DNF, team principal James Vowles said: «We need to investigate, it was a sudden loss of all electrical power in the car and we need to understand what caused that».

Onto Silverstone 🇬🇧.