Franz Tost happy with 'very aggressive' Alexander Albon

Franz Tost adviced Alexander Albon to be “very aggressive” in the Chinese Grand Prix, after all he was starting it from the pit lane.

Crashing heavily in final practice, Albon was not able to take part in qualifying at the Shanghai circuit and therefore began Sunday’s 56-lap grand prix from the pit lane.

Using a one-stop strategy, the Toro Rosso rookie raced his way to 10th place at the chequered flag.

Such was Albon’s storming drive that the Thai racer was awarded ‘Driver of the Day’ by F1 fans.

“I said to him, ‘be very aggressive’. Starting from the pit lane, what do you want to do?” Tost told Motorsport.com.

“The strategy was to start with the soft tyre, to be aggressive, and to overtake.

“We had two possibilities from the strategy side.

“Originally we planned a two-stop strategy with him, but the soft tyre worked quite well, and therefore we changed to a one stop.

“Of course we had a lot of work to build up the car, because the monocoque was damaged we had to change everything.

“So it’s also a good point for the team, for the mechanics, because they worked very hard to prepare everything in the best possible way.”

The team boss was full of praise for Albon’s efforts on Sunday, which saw him net his second top-ten result in Formula 1.

“Alex did another fantastic race, and scored a point for a second time,” he added.

“I’m really happy with his performance and how he drove this race.

“It was a perfect race, without any incidents, and also his overtaking manoeuvres during the race were very good.

“It was a well-deserved point because from Friday onwards he showed a good performance with the car.

“He was very fast on Saturday in FP3 and then unfortunately he came off the track.”

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