Kimi Antonelli won the first Spanish Grand Prix held at Madring on Sunday, ahead of Max Verstappen and Lando Norris. The championship leader took his eighth win of the season after a virtual safety car on lap 15, triggered by Lance Stroll’s stricken Aston Martin, undid pole-sitter Norris’s early lead.

That podium was the top line. The story below it, in a race where every mistake was punished by concrete, was Carlos Sainz.

Rosberg: ‘We need to criticise Sainz’

The 32-year-old Spaniard had been the public face of the new street venue for months. Motorsport.com’s post-race column singled him out as the man who slept worst, with former world champion Nico Rosberg spelling out the reasoning.

“Carlos Sainz was the ambassador. So we need to criticise Carlos Sainz,” Rosberg said in the column.

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Sainz had already dented the weekend before the lights went out, collecting a three-place grid drop for impeding Valtteri Bottas at Turns 6 and 7 in Q1. He started 20th.

An aggressive opening lap briefly reset the day. Three positions gained on the run to Turn 1, then a locked right-front, then a clip on Tsunoda’s VCARB that left the Williams with floor damage. Sainz played the contact down afterwards as a small touch that hurt his floor. The onboard footage told a heavier story.

The lap 14 collision that mattered

The lap that shaped Sainz’s afternoon came on lap 14. Chasing Fernando Alonso to Turn 5, Sainz brushed the Aston Martin’s front wing with his right rear as Alonso tried the outside line. The stewards ruled Sainz responsible and added five seconds to his race time.

Alonso, whose car needed a new front wing, accused Sainz over the radio of having crashed into two people and squeezing him into the wall on the brakes.

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Sainz disagreed.

“They are racing incidents which we will forget quickly,” he told reporters. “In my opinion, the penalty was unnecessary.”

Retirement came 29 laps later. PlanetF1’s classification lists Sainz as out on lap 43, the fourth and last DNF of the night alongside Lewis Hamilton, Stroll and Sergio Perez.

‘Hopefully this is the last year I’m fighting for P16’

Sainz’s frustration surfaced when he was asked about running in the pack all evening.

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“Hopefully this is the last year here in Madrid that I’m fighting for P16,” he told Motorsport.com.

The line captured both the personal weight of a home debut gone wrong and the wider Williams season. Sainz signed a new multi-year Williams contract last month despite the team’s struggle with an overweight launch-spec car under Formula 1’s new regulations, and Alex Albon has already committed to a 2027 campaign at Grove.

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