Toro Rosso rookie Alex Albon admits he was shocked by the performance of his new Formula 1 car after a day of confidence building on Tuesday.
Of the three drivers stepping up from F2, the British-Thai racer has the least experience in the highest category, as a result. team boss Franz Tost admits his two days this week are mostly about getting settled before more detailed work begins next week.
His start wasn't exactly ideal, however, spinning into the gravel at Turn 4 on his first lap out of the pits, but Albon took heart from not being the first to fall foul of the cold temperatures.
“The morning was a little bit difficult, to be honest,” he admitted. “I didn’t want to think about it [the early spin] too much, and Kimi [Raikkonen] did it yesterday so that kind of reassured me a little bit."
After Toro Rosso gave him some more grip with the softer C4 tyres, it was then he began to feel more comfortable in his new environment.
“It was a good experience. The high-speed stuff is still new to me, it was a bit of a shock, but I’ll get used to it," Albon explained.
“I did a filming day previously so it wasn’t a total shock and we’ve been quite a lot of time in the simulator for this very reason.
“The feeling was that I knew what the car could do, but once you have the G-Forces and you have the speed going, it does take a while.
“You know in your mind what you can do to the car, but doing it is a different story. It took a while to build up and there is some margin left but it felt okay.
“These cars, there’s so much grip, the braking, the feeling in general, it can’t come to you straight away.”
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Despite sounding conservative, the 22-year-old would impress finishing with 132 laps and the fourth best time, albeit thanks to the grippier rubber.
“It was a few laps today!” he admitted. “I definitely felt it. I could already feel it coming in the morning, I was like ‘it’s going to be a little bit of a long day’.
“The guys blessed me with a couple of race runs, I said ‘thanks for that!’. I’ll feel it tomorrow, that’s for sure.”
