F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Hockenheim Speed Trap: who is the fastest of them all?

Saturday's qualifying session was a truncated affair for Ferrari with both Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc unable to capitalize on the pace showed by their SF90 in free practice.

However, the pair's absence from Q3 and its denied opportunity to ignite Ferrari's gunpowder down Hockenheim's long back straight - which actually isn't that straight - shouldn't minimize the performance achieved by Alex Albon in qualifying.

The Toro Rosso driver only qualified a lowly P17 but blasted through the speed trap at a whopping 340.9 km/h!

The performance, when compared with the significantly slower top speed of teammate Daniil Kvyat, who was faster overall in qualifying, tells us that Albon was likely running very low downforce settings on his STR14.

Still, Albon's impressive straight-line speed points to the underlying and improving muscle of Honda's engine. And that's good news for Red Bull.

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Michael Delaney

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