Alexander Albon says he isn’t paying any attention to criticism of his performances from fans on social media.
The Red Bull driver lies fourth in the championship after the first seven races of the season. While his team have praised Albon’s race performances and technical feedback, he has been consistently around half a second slower than team mate Max Verstappen in qualifying.Asked how he deals with criticism of his performances from fans Albon said: “It’s quite simple: Just don’t look at anything. Throw away your phone.”
“In the end you’re the only one who can really make the change,” he continued. “Obviously all these comments, they’re there, but they’re not in control of anything, I am.
“So it’s very much [that] you understand it or you see it but it doesn’t affect me. I just see it as they have an opinion, that’s great, but I’m here to be better and that’s what I’m focused on.”
Albon qualified fifth at Spa-Francorchamps but slipped to sixth in the race after switching to medium compound tyres at his sole pit stop, which faded towards the end of the race. However he said the team made useful progress in understanding the RB16 last weekend.
“Especially if you think about the few races before Spa, it was a good step forward,” he said. “I felt like straightaway from first practice we were, both of us, a bit more happy with the way the car was feeling and just chipping away at it. I still wanted a little bit more from it, but otherwise it was quite a smooth weekend.”
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slowmo (@slowmo)
4th September 2020, 1:05
Its a fair point that he should just ignore the critics and get on with it, thats his job after all. Its also reasonable for people to criticise and say he’s wasting a Good seat as myself and others have felt this year. We don’t expect Red Bull to listen to random people on the internet of course.
geoffgroom44 (@)
4th September 2020, 10:15
Of course it’s fair to criticise as long as the criticism is directed to the correct place.Hidden in an interesting article on BBC by Jolyon Palmer is the following observation from JP, “In all the last three races Albon has ended up on an odd strategy.”
It seems to me that AA is willingly playing ‘the team game’ that RB desire him to play and the Spa tyre strategy seems to confirm this.Is it possible that AA is a better choice because his personality is less abrasive that PG, or maybe even Seb ?
And if people are going to be statistically honest, they should not compare Max’s 5 years experience with Alex’s 1 and a bit years experience…and expect the same result. As I recall, Max did not have a glowing first yeat in F1, did he?
Exactly how many laps did AA manage to run the medium tyres in the last race? I don’t think AA has the power of a Lewis or a Seb when it comes to changing strategy calls, does he?
geoffgroom44 (@)
4th September 2020, 11:34
Of goodness. Monza FP1..Albon 3rd 0.141 ahead of Max in 5th. This gotta be timing devices faults :-)