Albon keenly felt Verstappen’s other-dimensional driving during his time in Red Bull F1[F1-Gate.com]

Alex Albon spent a year and a half at Red Bull Racing but struggled to match up with Max Verstappen. Now Williams star Albon looks back on his time at Red Bull. Before becoming the current mainstay at Williams Racing, Alex Albon endured a difficult year and a half at Red Bull. The Thai-born British driver started his rookie campaign with Toro Rosso and was promoted to the senior team after just half a season, catapulting him into the big world of F1.

Looking back on those early years, Albon told the High Performance Podcast: “It was a very strange situation where I was starting to get very comfortable in Toro Rosso.” “I was living a dream life, where the pressure was less and less with each race. After the first race, I found my place and I just believed in myself. “Then the summer vacation started, and Helmut Marko called me back to his office.I didn’t know why.He was helping me with the transfer to Monaco and other things in a sense, so I thought maybe he would help me with the residency process.” “Then, just as the meeting ended, I said, ‘Oh, by the way, you’re going to be sitting in the Red Bull seat. Here’s your phone number. I’ll be your engineer. I’ll call him and say, I want it resolved.” “During the summer vacation, the factory is closed, so I can’t go there. During the shutdown, I can’t talk to anyone. But Marco said, “It’ll be announced in about two hours.” That’s it. It’s a big thing. Can I do it? Albon admits he had doubts about whether he had what it takes to match Max Verstappen when his move to the front-line team was confirmed. “I had the exact same feeling when I first got the Toro Rosso opportunity. I was like, ‘Literally, I just went through this. Am I good enough? Can I do it? To be Max’s teammate. What will it be like?'” “I’ve been doing nothing for two weeks just thinking about this opportunity. I can’t get into my happy place, I can’t wear a helmet. I have no choice but to prolong this anxiety.” “But of course. , I went into it with more confidence than when I first started. But it’s an opportunity. F1 is very tough right now, so we need to seize it. “At the same time, I thought: “This is an opportunity.” There are a lot of drivers who want to get a place in a top team, and in six months you’ve already got it.” You shouldn’t refuse that. Inexperienced Albon handed over his Red Bull seat to Sergio Perez at the end of the 2020 season. Verstappen remained as a reserve driver for the 2021 season, when he won his first driver’s championship. Looking back on his time at Red Bull, Albon recognizes where he faltered. “In hindsight, maybe it was a little too early,” Albon said. “I was definitely underprepared in the first year. A lot of things happen in F1. Everyone thinks it’s about driving, and in a sense you have to perform in the car when it matters. “But to tell you the truth, the most difficult thing for me to get used to was getting used to everything around me little by little. Once I joined the top team, Toro Rosso “My first race with Red Bull was in Belgium. There was a lot of attention to the seat change. Every mistake, every move is criticized.” So the level of engineering isn’t on par with F2. But what do you need to do when you’re struggling with the car? Do you need to set the steering wheel? Will that help? There are literally 30, 40 things you can do to fix it. I had no knowledge, no experience. I had never experienced a problem like this. Red Bull happy with start. Albon is proud of the car that Red Bull used for the 2020 campaign. He revealed that he had a harder time than the previous year. “In the first year, I was still behind Max, but I was able to drive really well in some qualifying and races. It got tricky. I think experience is especially helpful when it comes to getting out of a problem like this. “I didn’t know what direction the car was going to go in. I didn’t know how to drive to avoid the problem. It’s a big problem.” “And I had a driver who could drive anything. It didn’t really affect him. So in the end, what I realized later on was that I was overanalyzing and being too critical. “So I spent a lot of energy trying to find a solution, trying to find a problem. I actually should have taken a step back a little bit and believed in myself a little bit more and not looked at the data.” Verstappen’s driving style Albon denied that Red Bull was building a car around Verstappen, but emphasized that the Dutch driver’s style was very different from his own. “First of all, a lot of people are saying that that car was built around Verstappen, and Verstappen is like Michael Schumacher at Ferrari, and he built this team around him.” Albon said. “But to be honest, it’s the car. He’s very fast. So at the end of the day, he has a pretty unique driving style. It’s not that easy to get along with. “My driving style is… I think he’s a little bit smoother. But I like cars that have a solid front end and are sharp and direct. So does Max. But his level of sharpness and directness is completely different. “There’s something to look out for.” “To give you a sense of what that feels like, if you’re a computer gamer, you turn the sensitivity all the way up and move your mouse, and it pops all over the screen. In that sense, the more nervous you get, the sharper it becomes.” “Every time the car gets sharper and sharper, it gets more and more tense.Every time I go into a corner, I don’t know how the car is going to react.It’s not going well. If that happens, it will never go well.”