Alexander Albon completed 103 laps in the Scuderia Toro Rosso STR14, setting the 6th fastest time of the day and making a positive start of the second week of Pre-Season testing.

Pre-Season testing for the 2019 Formula One World Championship continued at the Circuit de Catalunya today, with Alex in action for Toro Rosso for the opening day of the second test.

The morning session saw the team focus on car performance following the short break between the two tests, with a focus on long-runs and the evaluation of the Pirelli tyre compounds for the season.
Alex managed to complete 39 laps during the morning session, setting the 7th fastest time in the process with a 1:19.689s lap time.

Following the lunchbreak, Alex was back in the car to complete the programme for the day. Near the end of the session, the team fitted the C4 tyres to Alex's car, which saw him set a lap time of 1:18.649s, putting him 6th overall in the classification - where he remained for the rest of the session.

Alex will be back in the car for his final day of testing on Thursday 28th February, where it will be his last day in the car before making the trip to Melbourne for the season opening round of the 2019 season.

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Alexander Albon (Car 23):

"It wasn't a bad day today, we started off a little slow after a couple of issues in the morning, but we quickly made up for the lost time and completed a lot of laps.

We made a lot of progress in the afternoon session learning more about the car and how it performs in longer runs, so hopefully we can build on that momentum for tomorrow. I'm still getting used to the car and there's a few things I need to work on and improve, but I think it's more a case of fine tuning. I'm still getting comfortable with the high-speed of the car and race management of when I can and can't push, but that will come with the more laps I do.

We did a lot of runs to see what suits the car best and also help me prepare for my first race in a couple of weeks."

Jody Egginton (Deputy Technical Director):

"Alex took on driving duties today with a long and varied list of test items to get through. As per normal, the day's running started with a block of aero tests including some running with aero rakes fitted and then, with increasing track and ambient temperatures, the general test programme commenced.

Even if this block of work yielded some useful data, a few small but unfortunate time-consuming niggles meant a couple items remained on the to do list for later. However, the impact of this was minimised thanks to the hard work of the mechanics.

The early afternoon was focused on the C2 compound, which provided an opportunity to get a good read on tyres in the highest temperatures of the day. The final runs of the session allowed a few of the remaining test items from earlier in the day to be evaluated, which meant more boxes were ticked.

On the PU side, Honda has picked up where they left off at T01, continuing to run through their test programme with minimal impact on the chassis plan, which is a further positive indicator of the hard work they put in over the winter.

Alex had a solid day today, gaining mileage and further important experience of the car's operating window, which has contributed to the team learning more about the 2019 car.

We have a lot of data to go through and process tonight to continue moving forwards in the next days of this second test and be best prepared for Melbourne."

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Press Release Content: Scuderia Toro Rosso
Media Content: Red Bull Content Pool
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