“Before Christmas”- Helmut Marko drops date for Red Bull judgement on Sergio Perez-Alex Albon saga

“Before Christmas”- Helmut Marko drops date for Red Bull judgement on Sergio Perez-Alex Albon saga amidst co-driver rumours.

Sergio Perez left Racing Point after the last race of 2020 calendar, but a few moments later a report was published about Red Bull announcing Perez while keeping Alex Albon still in the team.

Shedding light on the whole rumours fiasco, Helmut Marko has said that the decision on Alex Albon will be taken before Christmas, which now creates further anticipation.

“It was one of his best races,” Marko told Autosport. “Still, we will think it over and make our decision, before Christmas. We have to go through all the data. There are so many things we have to look at.”

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has also confirmed the timing of the decision. We’ve always said that we’ll go to the end of the year, and then make our decision at the end of the season,” said Horner.

“So Alex had probably his strongest race weekend actually this weekend, which is encouraging for him, but we now have a full picture of the season. And we’ll make that decision in the coming days.”

“Obviously we have a huge amount of data now. We have all the knowledge across the various circuits that we’ve done, and we’ll sit down and obviously go through that and come to the right conclusion.”

Abu Dhabi a strong performance by Albon

Albon came 4th in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and constantly challenged Lewis Hamilton for the last podium position, though failed, he seriously gave scares to the Champions.

“It is certainly what we were expecting to see,” he said. “Because the only way that you can put Mercedes under pressure is if, for example, they had split their strategy we could have been very exposed. And certainly, at the end of the race, Alex was able to close on them,” said Horner.

“He obviously lost a bit of ground at the beginning of the stint after the safety car, once he was changed on to the same strategy to the end of the race. But I think Alex has driven a good race, and he’s had a solid weekend.”

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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