Why Red Bull is right to back its much-maligned diamond

The story goes that Alex Albon, when arriving at his hotel ahead of Formula 2's 2018 pre-season test at Bahrain, found that he didn't have a room booked for him. Luckily, the Arden team happened to be staying at the same hotel, and Albon shared a room with friend and former GP3 team-mate Nirei Fukuzumi.

Albon began 2018 with no drive, no backing and no money. He'd run ART stablemate Charles Leclerc close to the GP3 title in 2016, missing out by just 25 points, and then stepped up to F2 with the French squad. Although consistent at the start of a difficult 2017 season, his progress was interrupted by a broken collarbone, and ART decided to promote from within for 2018.

British duo George Russell, fresh from winning GP3, and Jack Aitken were installed as its drivers for the first season with F2's new car. Albon was left without a seat, while ThaiBev - which had helped Albon through the junior categories after being dropped from the Red Bull programme - also wound back its support. He was out of pocket, without the backing to secure himself a seat.

The late Jean-Paul Driot, however, saw something in Albon. Having yet to sign a driver alongside Nicholas Latifi for 2018, Albon was invited to test for Driot's DAMS squad at Paul Ricard, his role suddenly becoming more pivotal after regular driver Latifi was ruled out of the test with an illness - meaning Albon would have to rack up the miles as Oliver Rowland and Dan Ticktum (who almost didn't make it after misplacing his passport) shared the other car over the three days in southern France.

Albon set the fastest times at Paul Ricard during the latter two afternoon sessions. Against the benchmark of Rowland - who had spearheaded DAMS' efforts the previous year and fought with Leclerc for the title - Albon more than proved his worth. Having turned up to the test with an old crash helmet and his McLaren Autosport BRDC Award overalls, Albon was fourth fastest overall, within two tenths of Carlin pair Lando Norris and Sergio Sette Camara, along with Russell.

Then F2's teams took the long haul to Bahrain for test number two. Albon arrived, hotel-less, in Bahrain and still yet to sign a deal to drive. DAMS was struggling to find a driver with both money and talent, and so Albon was drafted in once more for Bahrain - again, with MABA overalls thrown into a hold-all, as DAMS didn't have any ready for him. There's a reason why Albon, despite his eventual frontrunning status, never appeared in F2's 2018 intro sequence - the only thing he had available for the filming day in Bahrain was an old-spec DAMS-branded polo shirt.

It was harder to ascertain what the running order would be after that second test, with the order considerably more jumbled across the second batch of three days. But Albon's work ethic impressed DAMS regardless, having to conduct most of the donkey-work as the other side of the garage got the recovering Latifi up to speed. Despite no real forthcoming sponsorship, DAMS handed Albon a one-round deal for Bahrain, and would reassess after the pair of races at Sakhir.

Albon has had to compare favourably with the second-best driver on the grid in his sophomore F1 campaign, driving a car not built for him and with oft-broadcasted uncertainties over his future. He's arguably the most under-pressure driver on the grid

The rest was history. Albon finished fourth in the Bahrain feature race and earned himself an extension for Baku - where he won from pole. Soon, DAMS signed Albon for the full season, and he battled valiantly against Russell and Norris for the title - although eventually finished third overall after both DAMS drivers stalled in the Yas Marina feature race after being caught out by changes to the much-maligned clutch mapping. In fact, Albon had impressed DAMS so much that he'd been signed by the team to join Sebastien Buemi at the Nissan Formula E team.

But Albon's mental strength, having turned a race-by-race F2 deal into a championship-challenging season, had courted favour from upon high. As Red Bull promoted Pierre Gasly into its line-up for 2019 and sent his Toro Rosso team-mate Brendon Hartley out of the exit door, the Italian squad had two seats to fill.

Daniil Kvyat returned to the fold to take the first, but the second proved much more difficult to find an occupant. Dr Helmut Marko, whom Albon had previously considered as "not my greatest fan", began to grease the wheels with DAMS to pull back the driver he'd dropped seven years prior.

Albon had a choice: long-term stability with a Formula E team, or a potential short-term tilt at the F1 big-time. He took the latter, joining fellow championship rivals Norris and Russell on the F1 grid.

When you consider Albon's 2020 season, there are many adjectives you can ascribe to it: tough, challenging or difficult would probably suffice. They represent the struggle to get on terms with a world-class team-mate in Max Verstappen, a champion-in-making many times over if he gets the car befitting of his skills. Albon's future has been debated all season long, with Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg all linked to the second seat alongside Verstappen.

It also doesn't help that the car is geared towards Verstappen's driving style, in which he can grasp the wheel and hustle it for all its worth. Albon doesn't quite do it like that, and he's often a bit more circumspect and smoother with the car. While that might yield dividends in a different chassis, that's not something that the Red Bull RB16 responds to. It likes to play rough.

PLUS: The challenge of emulating Verstappen in the same car

Let's review: Albon has had to compare favourably with the second-best driver on the grid in his sophomore campaign, driving a car not built for him and with oft-broadcasted uncertainties over his future in F1. He's arguably the most under-pressure driver on the grid.

And yet, Red Bull wants to keep him. Team boss Christian Horner has made no secret of his desire for Albon to 'make the drive his', and the usually trigger-happy Marko has been uncharacteristically patient with him. Given that this is a team that suffers few fools, and just a year ago gave Gasly half a season before shuffling him back down to the B-team, Red Bull's show of confidence in Albon has been atypical.

Like Driot did back in 2018, when Albon had no money to offer DAMS for an F2 seat, Red Bull's higher-ups have seen something in him. The team sees a glimmer of a diamond, and it has been willing to change the way it handles its drivers to unearth it, rather than cast him aside and bring in a driver who would be a plug-in-and-play alternative.

Compared to the other rookies of 2019, Albon has had a much more difficult driver to measure himself against post-promotion in Verstappen. The Dutchman always had prodigious talent, emphasised by his rapid ascent to F1 at the mere age of 17. He's now in his sixth season, and has been at the peak of his powers in 2020 - the most impressive driver of the season bar the record-breaking Lewis Hamilton. To go into a world-class driver's team and to beat him would be a near-impossibility.

Conversely, Norris has been the match of Carlos Sainz Jr - a driver whom Verstappen beat during their time together at Toro Rosso - while Russell has only had the benchmarks of a not-what-he-was Robert Kubica and a rookie team-mate in Latifi. None of them court the same criticism that Albon does - that's not a slight against any of those drivers, but none of them have had to perform the F1 equivalent of entering a lion's den wearing a suit made of bacon.

Perhaps the simplest comparison is to look at qualifying results. Albon has been outqualified all year by Verstappen, and has only outqualified his Red Bull team-mate once. But the gaps between the two, on average, are not the gaping chasms that they are purported to be.

There is a devil in this year's Red Bull that Verstappen seems to be able to dance with, while Albon is left sat on the sidelines watching his team-mate waltz to results that the car has no place in taking

On average, and when you consider non-anomalous (in other words, not affected by mechanical issues or suchlike) direct Q3 lap comparisons, Verstappen has only been outqualified over a season once in his time at Red Bull; his first season in 2016.

Creating an average of laps, to the aforementioned criteria, across a season when both drivers have been in Q3, the gaps look like this:

2016: Ricciardo 0.067s ahead of Verstappen
2017: Verstappen 0.135s ahead of Ricciardo
2018: Verstappen 0.151s ahead of Ricciardo
2019a: Verstappen 0.591s ahead of Gasly
2019b: Verstappen 0.433s ahead of Albon
2020: Verstappen 0.489s ahead of Albon

You can consider the 2019 times to be slightly skewed as the sample set for both Gasly and Albon is smaller. However, a direct comparison between the two shows that Albon was immediately 0.16s to the good over Gasly after being drafted into the team ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix.

Although Gasly looked slightly average during his half-year stint at Red Bull, he's absolutely no slouch - indeed, he's a race winner after streaking to victory at Monza this year in an AlphaTauri. But it underlines the difficulty in rocking up to Verstappen's team, driving a car built around Verstappen's feedback, and finding an edge.

PLUS: How a "supernatural" adaption resurrected Gasly's F1 career

Another point of interest is the growing delta over Ricciardo over the two-and-a-bit seasons that he and Verstappen were team-mates. Ricciardo has always been a particularly fantastic qualifier, but even he could not resist the growing power of Verstappen's latent pace.

Albon proved in 2018 that he could be a great qualifier too, illustrated by his three poles in a row at Baku, Barcelona and Monaco during the first third of the F2 season. But it's his racing chops that first drew Red Bull to him. His swashbuckling drive through the field at China in 2019, having missed qualifying and started from the pitlane after a particularly hefty FP3 crash, made people sit up and take notice; that this mild-mannered man could be so bullish behind the wheel was a glorious juxtaposition.

In his first Red Bull start at Spa, Albon - having been saddled with grid penalties after exceeding an allocation of power unit components in a car he had yet to drive - produced some truly delectable overtaking moves to claim a well-earned fifth place. There is a propensity to be clumsy, and Albon has suffered contact with his two former team-mates already this season; he coalesced with Gasly at the start of the Italian GP, and then trod on Kvyat's front wing at the Nurburgring as spatial awareness seemed to fly out the window.

Perception is everything, and those mistakes have somewhat glossed over the willingness to make bold moves on-track. But remember that, with a podium on the line, Albon brilliantly dispatched Ricciardo at Mugello this year. And, had he not endured two high-profile tangles with Hamilton with big results in the offing, that perception could be very different indeed. Being tipped into a spin in Brazil last year with second on the table was later dwarfed in Austria with Hamilton depriving Albon of a chance at an unlikely victory in the late-race scramble for results.

Even if Albon's qualifying has been iffy compared to Verstappen, Red Bull has made a big statement by encouraging him to firmly cement his drive for next year. There is a devil in this year's Red Bull that Verstappen seems to be able to dance with, while Albon is left sat on the sidelines watching his team-mate waltz to results that the car has no place in taking.

But it seems Red Bull recognises this, and instead of reverting to type and reaching for the trigger, it has given Albon a stay of execution until the end of the year. It's analogous to the issues that Honda's MotoGP team has faced in 2020, where a bike designed for Marc Marquez has lacked its driving force throughout the year, leaving the other riders to struggle.

There is a room at the Red Bull hotel reserved for Alex Albon, and two races for him to prove that he deserves it. He has the talent to do it - a talent that fought the likes of Leclerc, Norris and Russell for titles - and he must find it within himself to bring the end of the season to a satisfying close.

If not, there's a possibility that he may find a Mr. Perez booked into his room instead - and the soon-to-be ex-Racing Point driver won't fancy sharing.