Williams F1 boss backs Alex Albon after incident made angry Carlos Sainz 'look stupid'

James Vowles has absolved of any blame for the team orders mix-up which left furious. The Spaniard was clearly unhappy at the end of the despite contributing to a double points finish for the team.

"That's not how I go racing, guys," Sainz said over the radio after taking the chequered flag, adding: "I've lost a lot of confidence here, on everything." He was referring to the moment on lap 11 of the race that he was overtaken by team-mate Albon.

As far as Sainz was concerned, that was not supposed to happen. He had been told over the radio that his team-mate was behind on track and that they were going to be holding position, but Albon was already in the process of overtaking when that instruction came through.

The British-Thai racer built on that move to finish fifth with another impressive performance, while Sainz also added more points in ninth having picked up damage early on. But he felt that he had been made to "look stupid" by the mix-up.

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Albon, though, has been cleared of any wrongdoing by his team principal. Reflecting on the race, pointed the finger at his team's communication during the race for leading to the incident which left a sour taste despite another strong points haul.

He said: "A message was communicated to both race engineers, effectively that Alex had a reliability problem and we needed to get some air into the radiators. That was communicated to both with the decision of just making a little gap between the cars for the time being to make sure we do that.

"However, that message wasn't clear in its construct. It wasn't even clear on whether overtaking was possible or not. The primary function is getting the car cool to move forward. To Carlos, the message was communicated, 'Alex won't attack you'.

"To Alex, that same message was communicated that he isn't to overtake Carlos, but only [once] his DRS was open and he was effectively alongside Carlos completing the overtake. So this isn't Alex going against team orders, this is on us as a team as an organisation to significantly tighten up how we communicate to the engineers and how quickly we communicate to the drivers."

Regardless of whoever was at fault, it was clear that Sainz was hurt and concerned by what happened. All Vowles can do right now to appease the four-time F1 race winner, who joined Williams this season from Ferrari, is promise: "It simply won't happen again.

"We spent quite a bit of time post-race and again on Monday talking through it – the incident actually was just a few minutes, but more importantly [on] how we as a team move forward from that and do a better job altogether in the future."