Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner says Alex Albon, who heads into his first full season with the senior bull outfit, could turn out to be the surprise of the 2020 season.
Albon entry into Formula 1 last year was unexpected. The British-Thai was initially scheduled to race in Formula E for Nissan, but a call from Red Bull motorsport boss Helmut Marko provided an unforeseen opportunity to join the elite with Toro Rosso for 2019.
Albon's performance in the first half of the 2019 season impressed Marko who promoted the junior to Red Bull after the summer break following incumbent Pierre Gasly's under-performance.
Verstappen remains Red Bull's leading force and among the favourites to win this weekend's season opening round at the Red Bull Ring, but Horner believes Albon could spring a surprise or two this year.
"For Alex, people do forget it’s his second season in Formula 1 and he’s missed sort of the first half of that, so it’s been a baptism by fire – but he coped with that incredibly well last year," Horner said ahead of this weekend's return to racing..
"He seems to deal with pressure very well and we’re just looking for him to make progress on where he finished last season.
"I think opportunities will present themselves for him and I really think he could be the surprise of the season in many respects this year."
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Albon got a little bit of a head start over his teammate last week when conducted the team's filming day at Silverstone with Red Bull's RB16.
Overall, the 24-year-old was happy to shed some rust on that occasion for getting back into action.
"I feel good," he said. "There’s so much time that, with any driver, there’s going to be that level of uncertainty as to what’s going to happen.
"I’m glad I did the filming day to get that initial dust off my shoulders but I’m excited, I think we’ve all been waiting for this.
"There’s been a long drought, we all do this because we love it and we’ve missed it, so I can’t wait to get started."
F1's upcoming frantic summer schedule will leave teams with no time for a respite. But Albon believes the frenetic activity in the next two months will benefit those teams and drivers that will be flexible and quick to react.
"Being back to back to back, we will have less time to prepare, unlike a normal weekend where we do some simulator [running], and of course there will be tracks which we’ve never been to, but I think that’s a good opportunity," he added.
"I think the good teams will be quite flexible, the same with the drivers, being on top of it and understanding the car and the tracks as quick as possible, and that’s an area where as a team I believe we will be pretty successful.
"Just looking historically at how Red Bull are good at interpreting and getting up to speed quickly. It should be good!"
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