Carlos Sainz has taken the blame for the collision with his Williams team mate Alex Albon at the end of the Dutch Grand Prix, which earned him a 10-second penalty.
Sainz was defending from Albon four laps from the finish when the Thai driver tried to pass him around the outside of Turn 1. On the inside, Sainz locked his front tyres, which sent him straight on and into the side of the other Williams.
The contact damaged Albon's floor, forcing him to pit and then retire. Sainz served his penalty and finished 16th. "It was a fair penalty," Sainz admitted. "I had a bit of a surprise when I went to defend. I had really worn hard tyres, struggling a lot with the car, with the pace of the race. And when I went to brake on the inside, there was a massive bump in the inside of Turn 1. The further you are on the inside, the bigger it gets.
"As soon as I touched the brakes, I locked up and I took Alex with me, which is the worst possible outcome for that race, because it's not like we were fighting for anything big. But honestly, it caught me so much by surprise. Apologies to him, because it's the last thing I wanted."
Both cars were running 15th and 16th by then, ahead of only Sergio Perez's Cadillac, so Albon made little of the incident.
"It's not a Verstappen and Ricciardo, it's less serious than that," he said, referring to the collision between the two Red Bull drivers at the 2018 Azerbaijan Grand Prix. "It was simply on him. I saw him lock up, so I immediately tried to follow him in a straight line. But we made contact, and my floor was pretty damaged, so we had to box."
Albon was more frustrated by a missed chance at points. Williams have not scored since Monaco in early June, a run of six races. Fernando Alonso spent much of the afternoon behind him and finished ninth, making a one-stop work in the Aston Martin.
Albon said: "The biggest frustration is the race itself, because I think we were in a good race. We were in front of Fernando for most of that race. Maybe not with this pace, but I think we boxed too early. We came out behind a group of seven or eight cars. I need to understand why we boxed so early, because we genuinely had a chance to score points today."
