The end of the 2020 Formula 1 season was one of the hardest moments in Alexander Albon’s life, since, despite having a steering wheel in one of the best teams on the grid, his future was a mystery.
The Anglo-Thai experienced a roller coaster of emotions during 2018, as he went from having a contract in Formula E with Nissan, a category with much less name than the Great Circus, to being one of the members of the Red Bull family, with what what this entails.
During his first experience at the controls of a Formula 1 he was highly criticized, because since the pre-season tests he has stayed in the gravel from time to time, but he never gave up.
Little by little he was picking up the pace in the elite of motorsports, something that, added to the poor performances of Pierre Gasly in Red Bull, made him go up to the Milton Keynes team in the middle of the course.
In his time with the Austrians, Albon did not reach the speed of his teammate, Max Verstappen, who was fighting for victories while the Anglo-Thai could barely lead the middle zone.
In this way, Red Bull was forced to get rid of Albon’s services and hire Sergio Pérez, with which the Londoner was left without a seat in Formula 1.
His moment of redemption came at the end of the 2021 season, when Williams announced his signing for the new era of the Big Circus. His hiring was thanks to all the shadow work he did in the simulator to make the RB16B a champion single-seater, something that the team recognized.
However, in the latest episode of the Formula 1 podcast, known as ‘ Beyond the Grid ‘, the driver recounted what that life experience was like: “It killed me. It killed me, it was terrible.”
“It was one of those things. It was announced that I wasn’t going to be a racing driver quite late, I think it was in December,” Albon told the microphones. “They still believed in me, Christian [Horner] and Helmut [Marko], all at Red Bull, and I still have a great relationship with them.”
“But from my side it was more or less like ‘I want to be in F1, I feel like I’m the hungriest driver I know, how can I get back into it?'” Albon said of his step back from the F1 team. energy drinks.
Regarding his role as a tester in the simulator to develop the car with which Max Verstappen became world champion, Albon explained: “It was also important to listen to Max and Checo, I always listened to their engineers, and took notes from them” .
“As people and their character, how did they interact with the team and how did they learn? It was very interesting to take that step back, away from the spotlight and the paddock, and see things from a different perspective,” he said.
“The car was fast from the start. Max was talking about the improvement he felt at the rear, which was more stable,” Albon said. “It hurts a little bit, because at the same time you feel like, ‘That’s great, I feel like I’ve contributed’.”
“People like Adrian [Newey] gave me a lot of credit for it, I don’t want to say I helped a lot, but I feel like I helped. The first few races were terrible, I was a reserve so I had to go to all of them but do nothing, just watching, I would sit and try to stay as far away as possible,” said the now Williams driver.
