Daniil Kvyat is wondering why Alex Albon has got so much praise for his performance at the Belgian Grand Prix.
Following a grid penalty, the Thai driver moved up from 17th to finish fifth at Spa, mostly thanks to a charge through the field on the soft compound tyre in his first race for Red Bull.
Given the type of performances put in by Pierre Gasly this season it was a very solid start, but Kvyat pointed to how it took Albon most of the 44-lap race to pass him in the Toro Rosso, after he too had started near the back of the field.
“I don’t know why you call it such a good start,” the Russian said via Crash.net on Thursday.
“He spent 36 laps behind me in a Red Bull Racing car, and he started in front of me as well. I don’t know, maybe in the future, he will do better.
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“I don’t know [if it should have been better], I’m just commenting on what I saw. Maybe it was the maximum, probably it was the maximum that the car could achieve that day.
“But the fact that we were fighting and I held up a Red Bull car for most of the race in Spa – where the car really matters a lot – behind me, it was a very pleasing race for me to be honest.”
Kvyat also claimed the performance difference between Albon’s RB15 and the midfield cars he was fighting made his result less impressive.
“Normally I don’t but I had to because we were fighting the whole race in Spa,” he said on whether he’d followed Alex’s progress.
“If he had stayed at Toro Rosso then yeah it would have been an amazing race for him, but he was in a Red Bull, so…”
Kvyat played down Red Bull’s decision to choose Albon as Gasly’s replacement until the end of the season and he believes that going up against Max Verstappen might be a negative for the 23-year-old.
“I think it’s not easy always, especially when the driver has high confidence and the car suits him, it’s definitely not easy to outperform him consistently,” he explained.
“But for sure the cars between teammates are usually very similar and it means the chances are likely to be very similar in terms of what you can achieve from that car.
“It’s difficult to say for me. I don’t know how Max is as a driver to be honest, I’ve never been teammates with him so I don’t know how to judge him exactly. But he looks in very good shape, that’s for sure.”