“I can bounce back”- Alex Albon pledges to fight back for Red Bull spot in 2022, currently enjoyed by Sergio Perez, who signed to replace Albon.
Alex Albon faced the brutal side of F1, as Red Bull demoted him after a string of underwhelming performances in 2020. Sergio Perez, who had a stellar season with Racing Point, was then signed as a replacement.
Albon, unlike Pierre Gasly, hasn’t been sent back to Alpha Tauri by Red Bull and rather designated as a reserve driver, who would be joining the contingent for every Grand Prix.
With the discouraging course of events, Albon is still willing to fight for his previously held post and views himself back in the regular starting spot in 2022.
“I’ve been through this kind of situation many times in my racing career, so it hasn’t been all that bleak, let’s say,” he said of the situation to the Motorsportweek. “There haven’t been any violins in the background!
“It’s more just been about getting back into it. I’m confident in myself, I know I can bounce back, and that’s my target. There’s no secret that it was a difficult car and it was a difficult season for me last year, so you have to take it.
“My response is not so much thinking ‘why this and why that’, it’s more thinking ‘what can I do now to get back into it’ and fight for it. They [Red Bull] would have gotten rid of me – let’s be truthful – if they didn’t believe in me.”
“So on my side, I know they still trust me, they still have faith in what I can do, and we just have to see how things work out during this year and going into next year.”
I will learn from the paddock.
Albon, in 2021, will have a reserve driver role, and apart from that, he would also be engaged with a few selected races in DTM. So, Albon feels that even without live-action in an F1 car, he will learn a lot.
“I won’t be in the car as much this year but what I can do is learn,” he said. “I will be at the track every race, so I can at least understand from an engineering side of it how the team operate on a more in-depth scale, but it was also just about being on top of the car.
“It wasn’t an easy car last year, and part of me knows for a fact that if I could have been more comfortable with it, the performance would have been much stronger.
“It’s kind of what I’m doing right now; for this RB16B, it is about making the car better. That’s been a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing over the winter.”
