Alex Albon drove a solid race in the F1 sprint as he moved up four spots from 19th to see the chequered flag in P15. He finished only 0.5s behind Ocon, leave the Haas’, Alfas and teammate Sargeant a fair chunk behind.
While satisfied with the race and speed they had, the Thai was critical of Pirelli’s tyres as he feels the C2 and C3 are “so bad” around Interlagos.
Although the degradation was big on the C4 compound (the softest tyre brought to Brazil), the Williams driver felt there was no other choice as they have no grip.
The lead runner on the mediums was Kevin Magnussen. He finished just over 13s behind Albon and 56s adrift of winner Max Verstappen.
“It was okay, a decent race for us, pace was reasonable, the degradation is just massive.
“It feels terrible to drive to be honest, everyone must feel terrible as the pace was actually not that bad at the end of the race and it didn’t feel good to me.
“It’s a strange one, when you have that much degradation, you feel like everyone should just go on harder tyres but the hard tyres are so bad around here that you have to use the soft tyres as they have the grip to begin with.
“It’ll be interesting tomorrow, strategy will be dependent on degradation of course.
“For me these tyres are just not good. You have to manage them so much.”
Albon went on to explain how this heavu management has been the case over the last four rounds. Max Verstappen also spoke in the post-sprint press conference about the Pirelli tyres not feeling good around the iconic Brazilian circuit.
“In Mexico it happened, in qualifying as well — we’re managing tyres in qualifying.
“Qatar it happened obviously, Austin it happened, there’s a lot of degradation, especially in hotter climates on tough tracks with high degradation.
“These old tarmac tracks tend to really eat into the tyres. It feels like when we’re driving around… it’s such a managed race.”
Albon starts P13 tomorrow as Williams attempt to hold off a charging AlphaTauri in the Constructors’ Championship.
Photo credit: Williams Racing
