Red Bull anticipate Alex Albon’s attention to detail means he will start improving as the team improves the RB16.
It was almost exactly a year ago that the Thai driver was told he would replace Pierre Gasly from the Belgian Grand Prix, this after the Frenchman had struggled to fill the boots left by Daniel Ricciardo.
In those final nine races, Albon impressed, finishing in the top-six in all but one, that being the Brazilian GP where he was spun out of third by Lewis Hamilton.
Still, his strong start had generated an expectation that he’d give Max Verstappen a run for his money in 2020, but as of yet, that hasn’t been the case, with Albon often battling amongst the midfield teams and struggling to make Q3 on a consistent basis.
“Alex is still very young and young in experience, only five races into his second season. We see the potential in him, we see on Sundays his racecraft is very strong, I think it is only a matter of time before it all comes together for him,” Red Bull boss Christian Horner said in Spain, defending his driver.
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“I think our car is a little tricky to drive at the moment over a single lap and I think it is a little bit insecure in certain areas but Max has got the confidence to drive through that.
“But Alex is a very deep thinking driver rather than a seat of the pants driver, so he is trying to understand the car and he is very sensitive to what the car is doing.
“Alex needs the car to be a little more settled and I think that will come as we improve the car, and hopefully, therefore, we’ll see Alex’s Saturday performances continue to improve.”
At the start of the season, both drivers had complained of the RB16 being unpredictable, and an upgrade coming next week at Spa is aimed at addressing those issues.
Furthermore, Horner insists Red Bull is doing all it can to help Albon.
“[We’re] in the simulator, looking at the characteristics, the style of driving between the two cars, [asking] why is Max able to extract more out of the car,” he explained.
“We bolstered his engineering side of the garage, and there’s a lot of belief in Alex.
“As he demonstrated in Silverstone, he has the ability to be a very quick racing driver.
“It’s not all making sense to him at the moment, we’ve got to try and help with through that.”
