Red Bull’s Alex Albon suspects some drivers may opt to qual✨ify for Formula 1’s 70th Anniversary Grand Prix on Pirelli’s Medium compound after the high-degradation seen durin𝓰g Friday practice.

Despi🍬te three drivers suffering tyre failures in a dramatic final three laps in last weekend’s British Grand Prix, Pirelli has stuck with its original selections for the second round at Silvers🔜tone, moving a step softer to the C2, C3 and C4 compounds.

Several drive💖rs complained about degradation on the softest C4 tyre throughout the two practice sessions on Friday, while Lewis Hamilton topped FP2 runn🐓ing on the Medium C3 compound, setting a time 0.176s faster than Valtteri Bottas’ Soft-shod effort.

“It’s☂ not a great choice by Pirelli,” Albon said follꦐowing Friday practice at Silverstone.

“The tyre isn’t quick, it’s too soft for this circuit. We will see what everyone else says but I think it wasღ quicker today on the Mediums than it was on the Softs.

“We’ll see in qualifying as well, because I think someജ people might even try and qualif🎉y on the Mediums. I think almost everyone was quicker on the Mediums.

“If you look at the track evolution and were quicker on the Softs, you were only quicker by a tenth compared to your first run, so it def🥂initely leans towards that way.

“The thing is, we don’t have♏ enough Mediums and Hards for the weekend so you are a little bit stuck for strategy. I think tomorro✨w it will be quite important to choose the right tyre at the right moment in Q1, Q2, and Q3.”

Albon was sixth fastest in the morning sess🧔ion but could only manage the 11th-quickest time in FP2, half a second off the pace of Red Bull teamm𝕴ate Max Verstappen.

“I’m still struggling a little bit with getting what I want from the car but it feels like progress because everybody se♉ems pretty quick,” he explained.

“So we ne🍸ed to do some homework tonight and come back stronger tomorrow.”

Ve💜rstappen believes the degradation seen on Friday rules out any chance of a one-stop strategy. 

"The softer tyres had a lot more degradation today and I th﷽ink it’s almost impossible to do a one stop now," he said. 

"I guess you will see a lot of two s💝top strategies in the race but I don’t expect the change in tyres to really set th🐈e order any differently.”