Albon happy with F1 car balance despite FP2 British GP crash

Alexander Albon is happy with how his Red Bull car is handling at this weekend’s British Grand Prix despite crashing out of second practice.

Albon ended the day in the barriers at Stowe, losing the rear of his Red Bull on corner entry. 

Despite his crash, Albon was second on the time-sheets just behind pace-setter Lance Stroll.

Reflecting on his crash, Albon said: “Yeah, we’ll have to look at it. The rear went quite quickly and I struggled to correct it. I thought I had it but then you get the tank slapper as well. We’ll have a look at the data and see.’’

Red Bull struggled for one lap pace at the Hungarian Grand Prix and Albon felt it had made significant progress since the last race.

“Yeah I think we’ve definitely made a step as a team,” Albon added. “The car feels good. We expected worse to be honest coming in to Friday but the car was hooked up straight away the first time we drove it in FP1. It’s looking good obviously I’m sure the Mercs are hiding quite a lot so we’ll watch them tomorrow. 

“Otherwise as a car it feels more balanced. Today the weather and wind is much different to what we’ll get tomorrow so it will be a bit of a reset starting then.”

Team-mate Max Verstappen only managed 14th in FP2 having been blocked by the Haas of Romain Grosjean.

“I got blocked on my fast lap and then moved on to race runs, so I don’t have a proper time on the board for FP2 but in the end that doesn’t matter on a Friday and it wasn’t a bad day for us,” Verstappen said.

“We keep developing and bringing new parts to the car and they seem like they are working a bit better, so I’m happy with that and the direction. There are of course still things that we can improve and on a Friday you don’t know what the others are doing. We will keep working but overall the car looked and felt better today. 

“On the long runs we also looked quite decent but who knows what the weather will be like for the rest of the weekend and how that will change things! Overall, I would say it was a positive day but we will see where we really are tomorrow.”