Albon eyes strong race after “tricky” F1 Silverstone qualifying

Alexander Albon is confident he will fare better in Sunday’s 70th Anniversary Grand Prix after qualifying in ninth place.

Albon progressed into Q3 for the first time since the second round in Styria, but could only manage ninth on the grid.

The Thai driver managed to recover to eighth in last weekend’s British Grand Prix, despite having a collision with Kevin Magnussen in the early stages - leaving him confident he can go well tomorrow.

“We do [have good race pace], we do, so that’s positive,” Albon said. “It will be a bit of a better race tomorrow I think because there’s more strategy to play for tomorrow. We showed we had good race pace last weekend. We will see.”

Reflecting on the qualifying itself, Albon says he was surprised he wasn’t able to improve on a fresh set of tyres having set his banker lap on Q3 on used medium tyres.

“To be honest, it didn't feel terrible and we did a pretty good lap on an old set of mediums in Q3,” Albon added. “I was pretty optimistic going into the last set. Just struggling a little bit to the previous run and I didn’t improve on a new soft, compared to an old medium. Just need to do some work and find out why.”

Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen will line up fourth after being narrowly beaten by Racing Point’s Nico Hulkenberg.

The Dutchman is the only driver who will start the race on the hard tyre and he’s hopeful that will give him the edge as the first part of the race progresses. 

“I just hope that I can have a clean start on the hard tyre,” Verstappen said. “The hard tyre was last weekend’s mediums. I don’t think it’s going to be that bad compared to what they are starting on. Of course, you might lose a little bit in the initial launch but I think it’s going to be better for the first stint.

“It depends if there are Safety Cars or not so we will need to wait and see, so at least it’s different to what other people are doing around me and see if we can if we can do a better job.”