Opinion: Alex Kalinauckas

Drivers seeking redemption at Red Bull is something we’ve got quite used to seeing. He’ll be kept busy in the background in his bid to fight back into the team’s favour

“Albon’s F2 squad felt he’d need to be more political to survive in Red Bull’s ruthless environment”

This time last year, Alex Albon knew his 2020 task was to save his Red Bull Formula 1 drive. What followed was a season that started with such promise, but quickly became ever more painful. It ended on a high and included two podium finishes, but that high merely brought Albon back to where he’d started.

Red Bull gave its under-pressure driver a full season to prove he should be kept on for 2021. But, in the end, it opted to bring in an outside hiring in the form of Sergio Perez instead.

Albon’s qualifying deficit to Max Verstappen underpins his 109-point and four-place gap to the Dutchman in the drivers’ standings. He was, overall, 0.7 seconds slower than Verstappen in his 17-0 qualifying head-to-head defeat, which becomes 0.6s with the two wet qualifying sessions removed, and 0.5s with the three sessions where Albon was eliminated in Q2 taken out too. Qualifying down the order just made Albon’s task harder. It left him vulnerable to fights with slower cars, and meant the usual top three disappeared up the road.

Only four times out of 17 starts did he take a top-four finish, and his two podium visits came in the chaotic Tuscan Grand Prix and after Perez’s late fiery retirement in Bahrain. In the two races where Mercedes made errors and Verstappen retired, and where Red Bull would still expect a glittering result – the Italian and Sakhir GPS – he was, respectively, 15th after early clashes, and sixth after qualifying well down the order.

Albon feel s “things were going better” as 2020 drew to a close, “but obviously, it was still a little bit too late ”to save his seat.

The stats back him up – he ended a poor run with third in

Bahrain in November. Then he was fourth in the season finale, beaten only by Verstappen and the Mercedes duo.

“I think my best race of the year was in Abu Dhabi, ”says Albon. “it just shows that I felt like I am improving.”

The Abu Dhabi event provides an interesting case study in Albon’s 2020 struggles. He was not far from harrying Lewis Hamilton in the closing stages, but two regular problems were still evident. First off, he qualified fifth behind Lando Norris’s slower Mclaren and had to battle past early in the race. But the real damning difference was that Verstappen won from pole.

All year Verstappen looked more comfortable in what was a very unforgiving package. Even in Abu Dhabi FP1, Albon was a spinner at the third chicane, losing the rear suddenly, where Verstappen was whipping the troublesome RB16 through just as he wanted.

It’s pretty clear what Albon’s role now is for Red Bull in 2021.

The team has had him working hard in its simulator ahead of preseason testing to develop the RB16B where permitted, and he must stay fit to deputise at either Red Bull or Alphatauri if needed. Plus, he’ll do a part-time DTM campaign, which means entering five events that don’t currently clash with F1’s schedule.

The first task on that list is significant, as Red Bull’s car woes in 2020 played a major role in Albon’s own struggles, and helping the team fix these will be a critical role in the coming months. “part of me knows for a fact that, if I could have been more comfortable with [the RB16], the performance would have been much stronger,” says the 24-year-old of weaknesses he must address when trying to earn a 2022 recall. Albon also highlights being“slightly down on experience” as a factor in his 2020 results.

That shouldn’t be underplayed: he is now stuck for the foreseeable future on 38 starts, while the least experienced racer at Red Bull or Mercedes in 2021 is Verstappen on 119. It’s worth considering whether Albon could have played this card harder in 2020 – after all, when he made his shock switch from preparing for a Formula E debut to making his F1 bow in 2019, the DAMS squad where he had taken third in the 2018 Formula 2 championship felt he’d need to be more political to thrive in

Red Bull’s famously ruthless environment.

Nevertheless, this is a driver who has been dropped from two F1 junior programmes (Red Bull in 2012 and Lotus after

2015), competed for single-seater titles with his future career continuation far from guaranteed, and even taken a podium three weeks after breaking his collarbone, in a car with no power steering (Red Bull Ring F2 sprint race). His softly spoken geniality doesn’t mean he is not tough.

All Albon can do now is excel in his current role and then look elsewhere if he must, suggesting “by summer break, you kind of understand how things are playing out” for the following year. His task as the latest driver seeking Red Bull redemption is well defined – be the best reserve/simulator driver he can, and shine when on DTM duty.

But a successful conclusion, even if he aces those jobs, is made harder if all four Red Bull /alphatauri drivers do well in

2021. Daniel Ricciardo’s departure decision set Red Bull on its current driver conundrum path in 2018, and perhaps a similar exit is the break Albon will need.