Sainz gets grid penalty for Albon incident

The penalty will drop Sainz from ninth on the grid to 12th.

It was prompted by an incident in Q1 in which Sainz blocked Albon's Toro Rosso through Turns 1 and 2, just after Albon had let the McLaren through while it was on a fast lap and he was preparing for a run.

"It is an incident I apologise for and the whole team apologises," said Sainz. "It ended up costing us three places."

The incident did not prevent Albon from getting into Q2 with a later run, and he played it down afterwards.

"I didn't really do a first big push, and then the next lap I had traffic so I basically had one lap to get into Q2 and I didn't think it was good enough," said Albon, who qualified 14th. "But when I saw [the time] I was like, I'll take that!"