Red Bull When Alexander Albon made the difficult decision to leave his top team at the end of 2020, they worked hard to secure a race seat to return to Formula 1 for 2022 in favor of veteran Sergio Perez.
Red Bull offered Albano’s services to the team in order to fulfill his destiny at Mercedes after George Russell left Williams. A young driver with plenty of experience at a race-winning team who showed real potential was favored to replace Albon Russell and help lead lowly Williams into a new era alongside Nicholas Laffey.
At the end of the season, Albon won the respect and trust of his new team and secured a multi-year contract extension. But while he has put in some of the most memorable and impressive performances of any driver in the middle of the field all year, he’s also shown that he’s far from finished in the cockpit.
Albon returned to Formula 1 with such professionalism in Bahrain, it was almost as if he hadn’t spent a whole year. An unimpressive first attempt took Williams into Q2 before finishing a respectable 13th. But the reality of racing for Williams was that he ran behind the field at Jeddah and was handed a three-place holder drop for Melbourne despite protesting his innocence.
In Red Bull’s 2020 season, Albon has faced fair criticism for his inability to overcome problems and his lack of fight on the road. But Melbourne has now proved to be a different and better rider. Starting from the back of the field on hard tires, he ran the entire 57 laps of the race before coming to a halt on the final lap, implementing the biggest strategy of the season. He finished ahead of Zhu Guanyu and an impressive tenth to secure Williams’ first points of the season.
He followed this exceptional drive with another good performance in Imola. After blowing his brakes in qualifying on Friday, he was 18th on the grand prix grid. Albon, who ran behind Pierre Gasly for the first part of the race, raced up to 12th in the final lap before tearing up without DRS, earning a bonus place when Esteban Ocon’s post-race penalty was applied. Only from the points in the 11th.
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Albon Williams is starting to gain a reputation for putting him in the position. Perhaps he should not have entered the place. That realization was further cemented when he managed to score two more points in Miami. Of course, thanks to a well-timed safety car that saw Sebastian Vettel and Mick Schumacher collide, Fernando Alonso was gifted third when he was penalized after the race.
But after the strongest start of the year, the next two weekends can only be described as poor. In Spain, he suffered floor damage after hitting a curb following his first pit stop, which saw him fall to the back of the field, behind other drivers, and then received a penalty for exceeding the track limit four times. But the race in Monaco was worse. A good effort to finish 16th was better in the first lap, gaining three places, but he ran out of the St. Devot circuit and got back on track, losing all three places. He then repeated the mistake, losing more time, causing damage that stopped Zhu Guanyue’s run before cutting through the barrier he was trying to rush past.
He shook off the poor two-header and went back to work. However, unforced errors aside, Albon were being alarmed by Williams’ lack of improvement relative to their rivals. That changed at Silverstone when he was given the luxury of the team’s first upgrades of the season, but a frustrating qualifying strategy saw him sidelined from Q1, with Latifi leading the old car into Q3 for the first time. In the race, Albon was the innocent victim of a secondary accident triggered by Zhou’s horrific accident, which sent him into an unprotected pit lane wall. Albon was taken to the hospital for a precautionary checkup but later released, missing the opportunity to gather information on the team’s reformation.
Although an improvement over the FW44 ‘spec II’, it was not a major one. Albon took a break from the summer to be in the fight for points again. Making the most of his low-drag car, Albon squeezed into Q3 for the first time all season and finished ninth on the grid. In the race, he faces the constant pressure of driving through the Belgian countryside for a big race, frustrated and possibly leading a line-up of fast cars. He coolly led his pursuers home in his tenth final point of the season.
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Another good performance at Zandvoort did not result in any points, but he knew his best chance of the season awaited him on the long straights at Monza at the next round. Unfortunately, he came down with appendicitis after practice on Friday and will never be able to compete. However, Nick de Vries’ fine first outing in the ninth suggests this is at least what Albo is capable of.
Albon said he was never at “100 percent” physically for the rest of the season. His comeback in Singapore was one of his worst, falling to unforced errors in mixed conditions, the low point of the second half of the season. Then in Japan, he got into a splash fight with Kevin Magnussen, causing radiator damage and ending the race on a day where Laffy scored the team’s final points of the year.
He continued to flirt with minor points in the USA and Mexico, finishing ahead of many cars. But this season, there was little he could do to fight for points other than hoping some unexpected chaos would create an opportunity.
As the season ended, Albon looked back, believing in his mind that he could score points whenever he had a realistic chance. He would destroy his teammate during the season – but that teammate was RaceFans’ lowest-rated driver of the season. He put up some amazing drives, but his worst was one of the most visible lows of any driver.
As we head into 2023 with a new team principal and a new driver, Williams will take comfort in knowing they have Albon to guide them through their transition. By teasing out some minor quirks, he could be very high on this list next season.
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