Albon doesn’t expect Red Bull F1 tyre advantage in Spanish GP

Alexander Albon doesn’t expect Red Bull to have the same Formula 1 tyre advantage as it had in last weekend’s 70th Anniversary Grand Prix in Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix.

Red Bull looked like it was able to manage its tyres best at Silverstone last weekend as Max Verstappen was able to beat both Mercedes to the race win, while Albon recovered to fifth place from ninth on the grid.

Blistering was the main issue for teams at Silverstone rather than tyre degradation, but Albon believes it will be the opposite in Sunday’s race in Barcelona.

“Yeah, obviously still not where I want to be, but it’s an improvement,” Albon said. “We’ll see, because I think last week, it was obviously a blistering issue, and that’s where we were much stronger than the others.

“We didn’t blister, so we had almost negative deg over the others, having pretty severe deg. By the looks of it, it does not look like it’s going to be blistering, it’s going to be pure deg, which means our advantage isn’t as strong as it was at Silverstone. I think race pace, although I think it can be strong, it won’t necessarily be as strong as it was in Silverstone.”

Given the limited overtaking opportunities at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Albon believes he will only be able to progress through the field through the pit stops rather than on-track overtakes.

“Strategy will be a big one,” Albon added. “I think here as well, it’s not as easy to overtake as at Silverstone, just the way that the corners are, sector three to stay close, also Turn 9 to stay close into the overtaking positions, the lap time delta to overtake has to be pretty huge. We’ll have to be imaginative, creative with strategy I think. I think most of the moves will be done on pit stops.”