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Alex Albon took the blame for the crashes with Lewis Hamilton that affected his career at Red Bull. Paired alongside Max Verstappen, the Thai-born driver was due to win a race in Austria when he clashed with the Briton and again in Brazil the same year, which cost him dearly.
Reflecting upon the clashes with Lewis Hamilton, Alex Albon spoke on the Beyond the Grid podcast saying:
“I would never, never blame Lewis for what’s happened to me. It’s all on me. It’s just one of those things. He apologised and honestly, I look at the Brazil one and think I could have done my part in avoiding a crash in some places. I always look at crashes between drivers and it’s never 100-0, there’s always a little bit of give and take in most of these incidents. The Austria one, though, I do think is his fault, for the record (laughs).”
Joking about the Austrian clash being Hamilton’s fault, the Thai-born driver believed there were times when he could have avoided the crashes. Alex Albon revealed that the Briton had apologized after the clash in Brazil and would not blame his performance decline on the seven-time world champion.
Alex Albon feels he was under pressure from the beginning to perform at Red Bill
In 2019, instead of signing Sebastian Beumi, Red Bull signed Albon, a driver who had been dropped from their junior driver program. However, as the Thai would later admit himself, he was very unprepared for the shift from Toro Rosso to Red Bull. On Beyond the Grid, the Williams driver revealed that he felt the pressure of performing from the first day itself.
Describing the pressure from the first day, Alex Albon said:
“I do remember in one of the races I was getting bashed like ‘where’s your performance?’ and I was like ‘Hold on a minute, it wasn’t even that bad, everyone chill out a bit. I think a result would have quietened everything down. I would have had the next six, seven races with a bit less of that noise because the noise started from the very first race of the year it was there. It was quite intense.”
Albon was dropped at the end of the 2020 season and spent the 2021 season doing simulator work behind the scenes to help Max Verstappen win the title. Christian Horner hailed him as the unsung hero of the 2021 season. In the second half of the season, he also mentored AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda as a driving coach. So far, in a comfortable atmosphere at Williams in the 2022 season, Alex Albon has not only outperformed his team-mate consistently but also scored points for the team in Australia.
