Alex Albon has a lot of potential that simply needs to be uncovered, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said.
This past weekend, Red Bull was accused of making the Thai driver “look like an idiot” by Williams’ George Russell, as he defended Albon after he only qualified 13th on Saturday.
That led to a rebuke by Max Verstappen, who perhaps felt the Briton was alluding to potential favouritism towards him.
But after Albon recovered to finish fifth in Hungary on Sunday, Horner did show his support for Red Bull’s second driver.
“Alex has driven a great race from where he was, to come from 13th on the grid to racing Ferrari, the passing moves that he made, all credit to him he made a great recovery,” he told Sky Sports.
“When he gets clear air he’s doing the lap times, so I think there are a lot of positives we can take out of the race.”
Horner also appeared to respond to Russell’s comments by admitting Red Bull had accepted the blame for his bad qualifying.
“He has picked up a bit of criticism which has been very harsh on him,” he added.
“Yesterday [Saturday] we made a mistake in the timing, put too much pressure on him, and we have to take responsibility for that.
“We apologised to him yesterday.”
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It can’t be overlooked, however, that Albon has been clearly slower than teammate Verstappen in the first three races of this season.
But again that is something the Red Bull boss expects to improve.
“I really believe Alex has got a lot more potential that we just haven’t uncovered yet,” he added, “and I think we need to tidy up the car, it’s very difficult at the moment.
“Max’s ability to drive around those problems, his DRS wasn’t even working in qualifying, that is experience on Max’s side that Alex doesn’t have.
“And the only way to get that is to do the events and go through the motions, and he is getting stronger.”
