A Look Back: Alex’s 2019 campaign

We’re winding the clock back to Albono’s maiden F1 season

Published

07 Jan 2025

Est Reading Time

2 min

Alex will be taking part in his sixth Formula 1 campaign when the 2025 season gets under way — and our Thai racer has come a long way since his F1 breakthrough in 2019.

AA23’s first opportunity at the sport’s top table came with Toro Rosso, when he replaced Brendon Hartley after an impressive third-place finish in the previous year’s Formula 2 Drivers’ Championship.

It didn’t take him long to adapt to the rigours of elite motorsport, as Albono followed up his Australian Grand Prix debut with point-scoring performances in Bahrain and China.

A P9 finish at the Bahrain International Circuit in Round 2 marked a significant milestone in Alex’s racing career, before a similarly impressive P10 placing in Shanghai.

Those results were followed by near misses at the Azerbaijan GP and Spanish GP (both P11), but it wasn’t long before AA23 was back among the points once again — this time with a best-yet P8 at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Though a tough period from June to mid-July saw Albono go four races outside of the top ten, he recovered in style at the German GP to claim an eye-catching P6 finish and eight valuable points for Toro Rosso.

That result at the Hockenheimring — coupled with a P10 in Hungary a week later — made Red Bull Racing sit up and take notice.

Christian Horner’s team took the decision to replace Pierre Gasly with Alex mid-season, ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix in Round 13.

And Albono made sure they didn’t regret that choice, as he recorded finishes of P6 or higher in all but one of his races with Red Bull that year.

That saw him add 76 points to the team’s total, helping his new outfit to third in the 2019 Constructors' Championship.

Highlights included a quartet of P5 placings in Spa, Sochi, Mexico City and Austin — and a fourth-place finish at the Japanese Grand Prix, which represented a season-best performance.

There were a whole host of positives for AA23 in 2019, then, with plenty more to come in 2020 and beyond.