Alexander Albon recovered from an early collision to secure P8 and a solid points finish after a strong comeback drive through the field at Silverstone.

Alex returned to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix and hit the ground strongly in the opening two Free Practice sessions of the weekend. Alex set the 4th and 2nd fastest times in Free Practice 1 and 2 respectively, despite a late crash in the latter practice session which meant he missed out on some late race-pace running at the end of Friday.

Saturday was a difficult day for Alex, struggling with the car balance through FP3 and Quali, resulting in Alex qualifying in P12 for the Grand Prix, missing out on a place in Q3 by less than 0.1s.

At the end of the opening lap Alex, who held his starting position of P12, tangled with Magnussen at Club corner. Alex made contact with the Dane’s front wheel and Magnussen spun out, hitting the barriers hard, though he quickly emerged unscathed from the incident.

Initially, it looked as though Alex might have sustained serious damage but as the safety car was released, visual checks and feedback from the cockpit revealed that Alex’s RB16 was still race-worthy and he continued.

Alex carried on and gained ground up to P12 - despite reporting vibration from his tyres and he pitted at the end of lap seven to take on hard tyres. He emerged at the back of the field in P19. Alex was later judged to have caused the collision, resulting in a 5-second time penalty to be added at his pitstop.

Alex managed to recover some ground to knock on the doors of the points paying positions, before taking the 5-second time penalty in his second pitstop on lap 31, as well as bolted on a new set of medium tyres for remainder of the race.

The Thai driver charged through from the back of the field in the closing stages of the race to steal the final points position from Sebastian Vettel with two laps to go.
Drama in the final two laps saw tyres failures for Bottas and Sainz ahead, moving Alex up to claiming a hard earned eighth place ahead of Racing Point’s Lance Stroll, taking the position on the final lap.

‍

‍Alexander Albon (Car 23):

"We had a lot of work to do this weekend but we did the best we could and the race pace was okay fighting back through the field.
I’m happy we’ve got another race here at Silverstone next weekend as I love this track and we can use what we’ve learned this week and put it into practice.”

Alex will get another chance at Silverstone next weekend, as Formula One hosted the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix to celebrate the history of the sport - which all started at Silverstone in 1950.
‍

Press Release Content: Aston Martin Red Bull Racing
Media Content: Red Bull Content Pool

‍