Horner satisfied with Albon: "He finishes fourth in championship this weekend"

Red Bull Racing had a reasonable result this weekend. With a third place for Max Verstappen and a sixth place for Alexander Albon the team can look back positively on their time in Belgium. It was striking that the two drivers in the race were under pressure from Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon. The Renaults turned out to be extremely fast at Spa. Christian Horner is happy that they finally managed to reach a podium with Verstappen.

“It was a tricky race today with tyre management but we managed to get solid points on the board with both cars. Max didn’t quite have the pace to fight the Mercedes with tyre degradation in the second half of the race proving to be significant, so we were weighing up whether to one or two stop,” Horner explains in the review of Red Bull. The speed of Renault was another reason why Verstappen had to go for the one-stopper.

Fourth place for Albon in championship

“Daniel’s straightline speed was obviously very strong so we opted to stick with a one stop and Max managed to bring the car home for his sixth podium in a row. "Meanwhile, Alex lost a place at the start to Ocon but managed to get it back through his pit stop when we elected to put him on the medium tyre which we thought was the best compound to attack the Renaults,” Horner explains. In the final phase, however, that gamble turned out to be bad, yet Albon was doing a good job.

“He did a good job today defending hard throughout the Grand Prix but unfortunately the Renaults were just too fast on the straights with their lower downforce configuration and he lost P5 on the final lap. Alex is now up to fourth in the Drivers’ Championship and he’s had a very solid weekend so now we’ll continue to work hard as a team before we arrive in Monza next week,” Horner concludes.