Alex: “I love this circuit!”

Alex Albon sat down to talk to the press at Thursday’s briefing ahead of the 2023 Japanese Grand Prix, the second part of an all-Asian double-header this weekend.

Alongside Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris, Yuki Tsunoda, and Nico Hulkenberg, the Thai driver had plenty to say across a variety of topics, from his race last weekend in Singapore, to his thoughts on the challenge to come at Suzuka. Read on for more.

It was a bit disappointing, of course, at the race last week.

Points for us, you know, they come long and far away from each other, so not to be able to score points was a bit of a shame. But all is forgiven. And we're going into Suzuka, a track that should play a bit more into our car.

I think it was more disappointing because we didn't have many hopes going into Singapore last week and to be in a position where we could have almost scored points was exciting. Normally, as long as we kept it on track, we would have scored some points. But we didn't.

It's low-braking, high-speed corners around here, and that's actually a style that suits us.

We've got some proto tyres to test this weekend. I think that's going to be quite interesting just to see, and give us a lot of mileage, basically, as drivers, to be on low fuel or get the most out of it.

I love this circuit. I think it's actually my favourite circuit of the year. It's that feeling that you can really drive the corners and really feel what it's like to drive a Formula 1 car, which sounds silly to say, but at a track like Singapore, you don't really feel like you’re driving a Formula 1 car.

Whereas here, the speed, and because it's so tight, so narrow, there's grass either side, the immersion in speed, the feeling of speed is a bit more than you get, for example at Paul Ricard. So it's very special.