Charging Bulls Star at Silverstone as Alex Secures P5 in #F170
Alex drove a brilliant race to rise from P9 on the grid to P5 at the flag. The Thai driver made a number of critical overtakes, including several brilliant moves at high speed around the outside of Copse Corner, to take his second top-five finish of the season.
Formula One celebrated it's 70th Anniversary at Silverstone for Round 5 of the 2020 FIA Formula One World Championship. Following a difficult previous race at the same venue last week, Alex was happy to return to the track to put what they learnt last week into practice.
Friday saw Alex set the 6th and 11th fastest times in FP1 and FP2 respectively, completing a mixture of one-lap and long run pace for the race on Sunday.
Qualifying on Saturday saw a mixed strategy of using the Medium and Soft tyres to see which gave the best performance over one-lap, with the compounds being one stage softer compared to the race weekend last week.
Alex set the 9th fastest time in qualifying, after reaching Q3 after setting his best time on the Medium compound.
Sunday's 70th Anniversary Grand Prix took place in scorching conditions, a factor that would play a pivotal role in the race regarding tyre wear.
Alex held his starting position of ninth when the lights went out to retain P9. As the opening laps played out, Alex found himself mired in midfield traffic and on lap seven, the Team opted to pit the Thai driver for hard tyres, looking to get him out in clear air and to give him a chance of undercutting his rivals.
As he caught the pack on his alternative strategy, he pulled off some brilliant overtaking moves to avoid losing too much time in traffic - including an overtake around the outside of Kimi Räikkönen at Copse and also on the Alpha Tauri of Pierre Gasly at Luffield.
Into the second stage of the race, Alex was on the move too and he on lap 29 he powered past McLaren’s Lando Norris at full speed through Copse corner to claim P7.
The two Red Bull RB16's came to life in the hot conditions, with Alex and teammate Max setting the pace as they came through the pack and led the Grand Prix respectively.
Alex moved up to P5 in the closing stages, moving past the two Racing Point's of Lance Stroll and Nico Hülkenberg - finishing in 5th position at the chequered flag, after just running out of laps to catch the one-stopping Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.
Alexander Albon (Car 23):
"I am happy with today’s race and the car was unbelievable. At the beginning of the race it was tricky to overtake with the DRS train but once we had clear air we had a really good chance to get through the field."
"I was a bit surprised by the balance and race pace today, it was so good, so we need to go away and understand why. It shows we have a lot of potential in the car, it’s just hard to unlock it sometimes, but we are good in these conditions so now we know to find out why. It was a good finish to get fifth and hopefully we can now bring some more performance to next week’s race.”
Following back-to-back races at Silverstone, Alex will head to the Circuit de Catalunya next weekend for the Spanish Grand Prix on the 14-16 September.
Press Release Content: Aston Martin Red Bull Racing
Media Content: Red Bull Content Pool