Albon wonders if two-stop strategy cost him maiden podium

Alex Albon says he had good fun during his Mexican Grand Prix, but the Red Bull rookie wondered if his two-spot strategy ultimately cost him his maiden F1 podium.

Albon never raced outside the top-five at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, managing his race with a suite of medium tyre stints, the second of which was much longer than the first, and a third and final run on the hard compound.

The Red Bull charger steered clear of the opening lap chaos that impacted the afternoon of teammate Max Verstappen and reached third at the midway point of the 71-lap event before settling in fifth position.

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In hindsight, Albon wasn’t sure a better finishing spot would have been on offer had he opted for a one stop strategy like the top three drivers.

“I’m not sure if we could have done one-stop,” he said. “I think we will have to have a better look at it.

“In some bits of the race our race pace was quite good on used tyres. And then, saying that, I think we’ll have to have a better look at the factory and see if we could’ve done it.”

Albon said he lost significant time when rejoining proceedings after his pitstops on the account of traffic, stumbling in particular on McLaren’s Carlos Sainz.

“The real problem was every time I did a stop I’d come out in traffic,” he said.

“I lost a lot of time with Carlos. I was a bit confused because I didn’t think I was racing Carlos. And I don’t think we were.

“But he defended well. I lost like six seconds or something stupid. So that was a bit of a shame.”

The British-Thai racer admitted that mixing it with Lewis Hamilton and the big guns up front in the first part of the race, and the prospect of a podium, had him quite “excited”.

“I think it was one of my best races in terms of pace and the guys in front weren’t too far ahead!

“At the start we were running third and I was getting quite excited. It was great to be fighting at the front but unfortunately their one stop strategy worked out better.”

Albon’s impeccable performance in Mexico, which nicely made up for his Friday blunder, will have likely done no harm to his strong chances of retaining his seat with Red Bull Racing for 2020.

“Overall, I’m happy with my performance and I’m improving my consistency which is important,” he said.

“The lap times are coming and now I’ve got three more races to improve even further!”

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