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When Alex Albon switched to Formula 1 in 2019, initially with the then Scuderia Toro Rosso team and only a few months later for Red Bull Racing, he was part of a generation of future stars, including Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris and George. belonged to Russell. At the end of 2020, he left the sport.
This is the first part of our driver-by-driver preview of the 2022 Formula 1 season. We’ll be reporting on Williams this weekend. You can find the rest of our preview here.
For Red Bull, the decision was a purely pragmatic one. Their only focus was on winning Max Verstappen a drivers championship, which in their opinion could not be achieved, while after two short attempts with Albon and Gasly they developed another young driver alongside him. They pulled Albon off the road after they had already handed over their development seats to Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda, and abandoned their coveted prospect of acting as substitute drivers for both Red Bull teams and last season under the banner of the DTM in the GT3 To drive series.
It’s been a strange, almost humiliating year for the one-time elite contender. While George Russell got used to the series in his third year with Williams before stepping into a real-life role, Albon spent his weekends doing television and his weekdays making failed arguments for Christian Horner’s dreams of a Lewis Hamilton ban to film. The reserve drivers’ priorities were ahead of the DTM season, so he missed the last race of the series where he clinched a win. But his résumé was enough to spark new interest this season. When Russell made his long-awaited move to Mercedes AMG F1 and Valtteri Bottas opted for Alfa Romeo over Williams, Albon took on the lead role on the fighting team. Next year he will return to F1.
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HOW HE GOT HERE
In 2018, Alex Albon was still in conversation with his peers as a future star. In 2012 he switched to the car, but his first major success came in 2016. That year he was runner-up behind Charles Leclerc in what was then known as the GP3 series. In 2017 he spent a winless season getting used to Formula 2. In 2018 he finished third in the series behind Russell and Lando Norris.
This resume led him to AlphaTauri for the 2019 season, where he quickly showed that he belongs in the sport with a series of five points in the twelve races. When Pierre Gasly was demoted during the summer break, he was the obvious internal candidate to replace him at Red Bull mid-season. Suddenly in a car that can win races, he ended up in all but one remaining race between six and four, and kept going through 2020.
His entire season with the team was much more disappointing. Albon took his first two podiums in his career, but was only seventh in the drivers’ standings and did not take a win as a team-mate of Verstappen. He was fired for Sergio Perez a few days after the end of the season and sent to the DTM for a year while he waited for a new opportunity that finally came up this season.
When he was fired for Perez, I wrote that he deserved better. At Williams he has that option.
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GOALS FOR 2022
The last time Alex Albon was in a mid-range F1 car, he exceeded expectations. Unfortunately, the Williams may not be a mid-range F1 car.
Williams finished a distant eighth place in the 2021 F1 season, not least due to a podium finish that George Russell scored for half points at the rainy Belgian Grand Prix. The car finished in the points only six times, two of them in the race that was virtually neglected, and new team-mate Nicholas Latifi was responsible for only two of those goals.
That burdens Albon to get the Williams back on the grid. Fortunately for him, a new car style, developed according to new downforce rules, gives the team the chance to take advantage of a scramble that could potentially shuffle the order of serial powers. Unfortunately, every single team on the grid thinks the same. A budget cap will also help the struggling Williams team, but Albon will still be responsible for getting the car as far as possible. Race wins are unlikely and podiums are still unlikely without catastrophic rain, but a fair breakdown of scoring placements will be enough to prove he’s a part.
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A SUCCESSFUL SEASON LOOKS LIKE …
Since the expectations of Williams as a team are so low, Alex Albon will aim for tenth place more often than first. However, he goes into the season with a relatively smooth teammate match-up, which makes the simple goal of regularly outperforming and surpassing your teammate less important than it would be for most drivers on a fighting team. Instead of measuring itself against Latifi, Albon would be wise to measure itself against the leading drivers at Alfa Romeo and Haas F1. These three teams have been in the back of the field for a long time, so on race weekends he should be within striking distance of their top drivers Valtteri Bottas and Mick Schumacher, unless one of them jumped into the race dramatically.
Last year, George Russell effectively beat this group (with Kimi Raikkonen in place of Bottas) and nobody else on the way to a 15th place season. It was considered a great success because the Williams car’s limits were known and it seemed to surpass them. Whether or not he has as high a cap as Russell, Albon should be capable of a similar season with the Williams.
Do as many Q3s as the car allows, avoid serious mistakes as you race for meaningful positions, and earn points in the back half of the top ten whenever possible. That should be enough for Albon to prove he belongs in the sport and, if both parties are interested, a strong base for him and Williams to work towards better things over the next few years.
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