Alex Albon has downplayed talk of him “struggling” at Red Bull despite failing to make Q3 again at the British Grand Prix.
The Thai driver will line-up 12th on Sunday at Silverstone after a difficult weekend blighted by a big crash on Friday and electrical issues limiting his running on Saturday morning.
Still, that result isn’t doing anything to lift at least external pressure on Albon, but he maintains the situation isn’t as bad as some think.
“Firstly, I don’t see it as struggling, I feel like race one we had a very strong race, race two we finished fourth and three we finished fifth,” he was quoted by Crash.net.
“If that’s struggling, I’d be worrying about other things. I’m happy with the first three races but things haven’t gone our way.
“I’m not worried in the sense it’s been tough, it’s just tough qualifying and on my side and I’m just focused on trying to get more comfortable with the car.”
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Albon is also confident he can repeat his comeback through the field from Budapest in the race.
“Sundays have tended to go pretty well for me,’’ he added. “We made up a lot of positions in the last few races we’ve done but obviously we don’t want to keep doing it.
“I think when it comes to Sunday we tend to go a bit better. We have free tyre choice obviously tomorrow so we can hope for some high degradation, which does look like it’s going to be on the cards tomorrow.
“I should be able to make up some positions. We didn’t do a long run after FP2 so that is a little bit more tricky but we will go through the data now, have a look and see what we need to do in terms of myself and the car – tyre management and things like that.”
So far this season, Red Bull boss Christian Horner has continued to support Albon, claiming criticism of him is without foundation.
However, with teammate Max Verstappen alone again in third to try and fight the two Mercedes, and a substantial 1.2s gap between their best laps, the first sign of frustration was there.
“Especially with these margins we’re looking at, it’s disappointing that the team doesn’t have both cars in Q3,” he told Channel4.