Alex Albon has offered an insight into what it was like to go up against Max Verstappen, suggesting that the extreme ‘directness and sharpness’ of the Red Bull machinery served to his detriment during the 18 months he spent with the Milton Keynes-based team.
The Thai-British driver was prematurely promoted into the Red Bull team partway through his rookie F1 season in 2019 after Pierre Gasly endured a miserable start to the campaign. He finished in the top six in eight of his first nine races with his new employers, but his form crumbled in 2020.
Despite clinching two podiums in his first full season with Red Bull, Albon was outqualified at every single race by Verstappen, who finished with over double his team-mate’s points. This ultimately spelled the end of the partnership with Christian Horner opting to replace him with Sergio Perez, who had been ousted by Racing Point to make room for Sebastian Vettel’s arrival.
Speaking about his time as Verstappen’s team-mate on the High Performance Podcast, Albon explained: “The first thing is a lot of people say that car is built around him. Truthfully… the car is what it is.
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“He has quite a unique driving style actually. It’s not that easy to get along with. My driving style is a bit more on the smooth side, but I like a car that has a good front end, so quite sharp, [and] quite direct. Max does too, but his level of sharp and direct is kind of another… it’s a whole different level.
“I don’t know if you guys play computer games at all, but if you bump up the sensitivity completely to the max and you move that mouse and it’s just darting across the screen everywhere… that’s kind of how it feels.
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“It becomes so sharp that it makes you a little bit tense and it just starts to snowball and every time the car becomes sharper and sharper you start to become more tense.
“And I think it’s like any sport, if you start to not be in that flow state and you’re having to really think about it, and every time you go into a corner you don’t know how it’s going to react, you don’t have that kind of… well it’s purely the confidence in the car, the flow, it doesn’t work.”
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