Alex Albon admits he thought a podium was within reach before falling back to fifth at the Mexican Grand Prix.

The Thai driver capitalised on the contact between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen in the first three corners to claim third and would keep the Mercedes behind in the early laps.

As a result, knowing how critical track position is at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Albon did give himself the chance to dream for a while.

“Yeah, the first 15 laps!” he told RaceFans.

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Ultimately, however, the decision to commit to a two-stop strategy early would drop Albon out of contention.

"We did the two-stop, obviously. I’m not sure if we could have done one-stop," Alex conceded. "I think we will have to have a better look at it.

“In some bits of the race, our pace was quite good on used tyres, and then, saying that, I think we’ll have to have a better look at the factory and see if we could’ve done it.”

His stop also triggered Ferrari to call in Charles Leclerc from the lead and Albon could well have altered the course of the race for others too had it not been for one driver.

“The real problem was every time I did a stop I’d come out in traffic [and] fight,” he said. “I lost a lot of time with Carlos [Sainz].”

Ultimately, Albon would end the race some 15 seconds behind Leclerc on the same strategy, which for Red Bull boss Christian Horner was positive.

“He’s impressed the whole team with his performance to date, and each weekend he’s progressing, he’s getting stronger,” he commented.

“It was a pretty decent race for Alex, I’m not sure he would have held the third place, he had Lewis behind him and Lewis looked a bit quicker. It probably would have been difficult to keep Leclerc behind as well.

“I think he’s getting closer and closer to the pace, he’s generally doing a pretty decent job and he’s stepping up and stepping up. Considering he lost pretty much all of P2, I think his recovery has been very strong.”