Williams cannot afford the financial and development consequences of the collision between Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon at the Dutch Grand Prix, according to Sky Sports Formula 1 analyst Bernie Collins.
Speaking on the Sky Sports F1 Show, Collins highlighted the serious impact of the intra-team crash on the Grove-based team, which is already dealing with an overweight car, delayed upgrades and budget-cap constraints.
Williams entered the Zandvoort weekend after announcing contract extensions for both drivers. However, its race quickly unravelled when Sainz and Albon made contact. Albon retired from the race, while Sainz received a 10-second penalty and eventually finished 16th.
“The first rule within a team is do not hit your team-mate,” Collins said. “That is like the P1 rule. Particularly [for] a team who are struggling to bring upgrades, struggling for money. Their car is overweight and underperforming.
“We hear Mercedes saying they don’t have enough money to bring upgrades. You just can’t lose the parts, the performance, the knowledge. So I think that’s something that they’re going to have a big discussion about.
“Whether it comes out of their pay packet or not doesn’t matter because it’s already out of the budget. You can’t put it back into the budget and say, ‘Oh, the drivers have subbed this bit of the budget.’ It doesn’t work like that. So that was a difficult weekend for them.
“And whether they did or didn’t do the right strategy, it was only [Fernando] Alonso who did the other strategy. So, they had very similar strategies to those around them. But the performance was lacking, and it just seems the car wasn’t the right weight, and it wasn’t delivered on time, and it didn’t have the right performance. So, there’s lots going on in the background of Williams there.”
