Photo: Nuri Yilmazer / Red Bull
Former Red Bull Racing Formula 1 driver Alexander Albon will switch to the sports car competition this year with a drive in the GT3-based DTM series.
Albon and Red Bull Junior Liam Lawson will take part in the new German championship with the support of the Austrian energy drink giant Red Bull.
Neither the team nor the car that both drivers will be working with has been announced.
Albon completed F1 as a driver for Toro Rosso in 2019 before being promoted to the main Red Bull team as a replacement for Pierre Gasly in the middle of the season.
The 24-year-old stayed with Red Bull last year and finished seventh overall. Its highlights were podiums in Mugello and Bahrain.
Albon is now about to make his sports car debut after Red Bull hired Sergio Perez as a partner for Max Verstappen in the 2021 season and the British-Thai racing driver no longer has a full-time drive.
“Formula 1 drivers like Alex Albon, DTM stars like three-time champion Rene Rast, GT professionals and young talents like Liam Lawson – that’s a high-class driver mix that I would like for the 2021 DTM season,” said the DTM boss Gerhard Berger.
“It also fits in perfectly with the fact that ex-Formula 1 world champion Jenson Button and his team have already submitted an entry for the DTM.
“Alex Albon is a young, ambitious driver and an outstanding win for the DTM.”
Albon will drive in the DTM if his role as Red Bull Racing F1 test and reserve driver is not compromised, while a yet-to-be-confirmed replacement will step in for the laps he cannot participate in.
New Zealand-born teenager Lawson, who finished fifth in the FIA Formula 3 Championship last year, holds the second full-time racing seat for the Red Bull DTM program.
The 18-year-old is a former champion of the Toyota Racing Series and has won races at the Euroformula Open and the ADAC Formula 4.
Red Bull motorsport consultant Dr. Helmut Marko, who headed a DTM team in the 1980s, explained: “The DTM with a high-class field and GT3 sports car is an interesting platform and a real challenge, both for successful racing drivers like Alex Albon Was our Red Bull junior driver Liam Lawson concerns. “
Daniel Lloyd is a UK-based reporter for Sportscar365 who covers the FIA World Endurance Championship, AWS’s GT World Challenge Europe and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, among others.
