Alex Albon finished in P8 in the Spanish Grand Prix in sweltering hot conditions at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for Aston Martin Red Bull Racing.

The final race in the second triple-header of racing took place at the Spanish Grand Prix in blazing hot conditions all weekend.

Alex improved through the Free Practice sessions and into Qualifying, making it through into Q3 to battle for the Top-10. After the opening Q3 runs the Thai driver sat in eighth place with a time of 1:17.311. And in the final runs he was able to improve by three tenths of a second to rise to sixth place on the grid for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Alex  made a solid start and he came close to claiming P4 after a strong launch into the slipstream battle heading towards turn one. Sadly he was boxed in by the battle between Bottas and Stroll and was forced to hold his starting position.

Alex made his first stop of the race at the end of lap 17 and took on hard tyres. That dropped him to P16, but when runners around him also began to pit, he quickly began to climb back up the order. It was a rise aided by some great overtakes, particularly one past Kimi Räikkönen on the inside of the fast turn three.
By lap 24 he was back up to P11 and chasing Renault’s Esteban Ocon for a place in the points. Ocon soon passed Magnussen to take P9 and Alex swiftly made his move past the Haas driver to take P10.

Alex continued to make steady progress through the field. By lap 33, he was up to P8 ahead of Gasly, Norris and Leclerc. That became P7 when Ricciardo finally made his first stop and Alex then began to hunt down Sainz who was three seconds ahead in P6.

Alex’s hard tyres, though, were not helping him and as the race approached two-thirds distance he pitted for a set of mediums and dropped to P11 behind Sainz.
Alex managed to recover to P8 after a difficult middle stint on the hard compound of tyres, holding it to the chequered flag to secure 4-points for the team and himself.
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‍Alexander Albon (Car 23):

"It was a hard afternoon and I’m not happy with my race. It was really tricky out there and I just didn’t have any grip on any tyre compound. Each stint I was nursing and looking after the tyres but after six or seven laps I just had no grip. It was frustrating and the opposite to Silverstone last week. No matter what we did we just really struggled to keep the tyres alive.”

"It hasn’t been an issue this year so we’ll need to look at the data and see the reasons behind it because at the moment we just have question marks. I was struggling in sector three mostly, I couldn’t stay close enough to cars ahead so I couldn’t overtake and I was kind of a sitting duck. Now we need to understand why today was so different to last weekend in the race so we can come back stronger and improve for Spa.”

Alex has a short two-week break before returning to action at Spa-Francorchamps on the 29-30 August - returning to the venue where he made his brilliant debut with Aston Martin Red Bull Racing last season.
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Press Release Content: Aston Martin Red Bull Racing
Media Content: Red Bull Content Pool

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