Alex Albon may have lost his race seat at Red Bull for 2021, but the Thai driver’s been busy in the team’s simulator over the winter, helping the team’s engineers evolve 2021’s RB16B into an easier-to-driver machine than the RB16 that he and team mate Max Verstappen campaigned last year.
The 2020-spec RB16 was infamously frisky from the outset, with Verstappen spinning the car twice on his first day of running at pre-season testing in Barcelona – while the car’s spiky handling characteristics likely contributed both to Albon’s struggles to match Verstappen’s pace across the season, as well as a number of big shunts for the Thai, notably his FP2 crashes at the British and Bahrain Grands Prix.
READ MORE: Horner says brace of Red Bull tests ‘of huge value’ to new recruit Perez
But having now been given the role of Red Bull’s reserve and development driver in 2021 – with Sergio Perez, who made his first test outings for the team earlier this week, taking his race seat – Albon said his “winter project” had been making improvements to last year’s Red Bull RB16 to allow Perez and Verstappen “hit the ground running” with the RB16B at the season opening Bahrain Grand Prix on March 28.
“RB16B has kind of been my winter project a little bit, doing a lot of stuff with the sim,” said Albon, speaking at the car’s Silverstone shakedown test, where Albon himself drove a 2019-spec RB15. “Of course last year’s car had its difficulties and [my job was] just kind of ironing them out, making sure we can hit the ground running this year.
“It’s been nice to see it translate, and I know that a lot of the stuff we’ve done has already made it onto the car before it’s even been driven, so it’s just showing that all the hard work is paying off.”