Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsWilliams

Lynn not bitter over Red Bull departure

Williams development driver Alex Lynn says he enjoyed an amicable split from Red Bull after leaving its junior team over the winter.

Lynn won the GP3 championship last season but was overlooked for a race seat at Toro Rosso in favour of Carlos Sainz Jr. While Red Bull has added GP3 runner-up Dean Stoneman to its junior team and placed him in Formula Renault 3.5, Lynn said there were no opportunities to gain F1 experience if he stayed at Red Bull and was allowed to pursue other options which saw him join Williams and secure a GP2 seat with DAMS.

“There was not going to be any opportunities within the next few years,” Lynn told F1i. “At the end of the day me and Helmut [Marko] get along very well and that was it really. That was the decision they took and I respected that decision.

“They said ‘Look, to be honest with you we haven’t got any opportunities in the next two years’, so I said ‘OK, do you mind if I look elsewhere?’ And they said ‘No, of course, we can’t stop you’.

“I would have been waiting just in the hope that something could come up but to be honest with you once I realised what the opportunity could be with Williams that became my main goal. Offering the opportunity to actually be integrated within the team fully and to be nurtured hopefully in to a grand prix driver was a big attraction.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.