How Albon plans to fight his way out of Red Bull limbo

This time a year ago, Alex Albon knew his 2020 task was to save his Formula 1 drive with Red Bull.

What followed was a season that started with such promise - including the brief chance of a shock win in the season opener before that clash with Lewis Hamilton - but quickly became ever more painful. It ended on a high, and included two podium finishes (something Pierre Gasly didn't manage as a Red Bull driver), but the rise merely brought Albon back to where he'd more or less been.

Unlike the previous year, Red Bull gave its under-pressure driver a full season to prove he should be kept on for 2021. But in the end it opted to bring in an outside hire instead, for the first time in 13 years, with plenty of evidence from Albon's results showing just why its hand had been so forced as Sergio Perez comes on-board for the upcoming campaign.

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"It was disappointing," Albon says in his first media appearance since his demotion to reserve driver for Red Bull's two F1 squads - a Zoom call from its Milton Keynes base earlier this week.

"It is always going to be disappointing. This is our dream [racing in F1]. But very quickly to be honest it was one of those things where there's no point feeling sorry for yourself. You've got to get back into it and do as much as you can to get back.

"My goal of course is to be back in a seat next year, and just be ready for this year as well. You never know what's going to happen in terms of fitness or with COVID around. This winter has been kind of making sure that I'm as ready as I can be, being as fit as I can, doing all the simulator stuff. And yes, even hopefully we get a few days where I can drive [an F1 car in 2021], and do some tyre tests and things like that."

Albon ended 2020 109 points and four places behind Max Verstappen in the drivers' standings - even with 15 race finishes to his team-mate's 12. Verstappen won twice and took a pole in another year where Mercedes was crushingly dominant - the only driver able to keep up with the Black Arrows on many occasions.

But Albon's qualifying deficit to Verstappen underpins all this. He was, overall, 0.7s slower than Verstappen in his 17-0 qualifying head-to-head defeat, which becomes 0.6s with the two wet qualifying sessions for the Styrian and Turkish races removed and 0.5s with the three sessions where Albon was eliminated in Q2 (Hungary, Britain and Sakhir) taken out as well.

"Part of me knows for a fact if I could be able to be more comfortable with [the RB16], the performance would have been much stronger" Alex Albon

Qualifying down the order just made Albon's task harder. It left him vulnerable to fights with slower cars and meant the usual top three disappeared up the road faster.

Only four times out of 17 starts did he take a top four finish - his two rostrum visits coming in the chaotic Tuscan Grand Prix and after Perez's late fiery retirement in Bahrain. In the two races Mercedes gave away and Verstappen retired - Monza and Sakhir - he was respectively P15 after clashes with Pierre Gasly and Romain Grosjean, and sixth after qualifying well down the order.

Albon feels "things were going better", as 2020 drew to a close, "but obviously, it was still a little bit too late" to save his seat. The stats back him up - he ended a run of one top five finish (his Mugello podium) between mid-August's Spanish GP and late November's opening Bahrain round with his podium in that event. But there, he had needed Perez to retire to climb higher than fourth - where he had taken his first chequered flag of the season in the Styrian race.

"I think my best race of the year was in Abu Dhabi [the season finale]," Albon explains. "It just shows that I felt like I am improving."

The Abu Dhabi event provides an interesting case study in Albon's 2020 struggles. He finished fourth and was not far from harrying Hamilton in the closing stages - but two regular problems were still evident. First off, he qualified fifth behind Norris's slower McLaren - having to battle by early in the race. But the real damning difference was that Verstappen won from pole.

All year Verstappen looked more comfortable in what was a very unforgiving package. Even in Abu Dhabi FP1, Albon was a spinner at the third chicane, losing the rear suddenly just has he had after the safety car released the pack in the Imola race, where Verstappen was whipping the troublesome RB16 through just as he wanted on the day at the Yas Marina track.

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Right now in 2021, it's pretty clear what Albon's role now is for Red Bull.

The team has had him working hard in its simulator ahead of pre-season testing to develop the RB16B where permitted and he must keep up his fitness to be ready to deputise at either Red Bull or AlphaTauri. Plus, he'll enter a part-time DTM campaign with a Ferrari 488 GT3 run by AF Corse, which means entering into five events that don't currently clash with F1's 2021 calendar.

The first task on that list is significant, as Red Bull's car woes in 2020 played a major role in Albon's own struggles - and helping in the team's quest to fix these will be a critical role in the coming months.

"Part of me knows for a fact if I could be able to be more comfortable with [the RB16], the performance would have been much stronger," the 24-year-old says of weaknesses he must address when trying to earn a 2022 recall. Albon also highlights being "slightly down on experience" as a factor in his 2020 results.

That shouldn't be underplayed - he is now stuck for the foreseeable on 38 starts - while the least experienced racer at Red Bull or Mercedes in 2021 is Verstappen on 119.

It's worth considering whether Albon could've played this card harder in 2020 - after all, when he made his shock switch from preparing for a Formula E debut to making his F1 bow in 2019, the DAMS squad where he had taken third in the 2018 Formula 2 championship (and was set to join its Nissan e.dams FE set-up) felt he'd need to be more political to thrive in Red Bull's famously ruthless environment. But now he's out of a race drive, such points are ever harder to press...

Nevertheless, this is a driver who has been dropped from two F1 junior programmes (Red Bull in 2012 and Lotus after 2015), competed for single-seater titles with his future career continuation far from guaranteed, and even taken a podium three weeks after breaking his collarbone in a car with no power steering (Red Bull Ring F2 sprint race). His softly spoken geniality doesn't mean he is not tough.

"The team know what I am capable of. They would have gotten rid of me, let's be truthful, if they didn't believe in me" Alex Albon

All Albon can do now is excel in his current role and then look elsewhere if he must (he stuck to the script as he remains "contracted to Red Bull" during the Zoom call, but did suggest "by summer break, you kind of understand how things are playing out" for the following year).

"On my side, I can't control results outside of myself," he says of what Red Bull needs to see to provide a recall. "So, it will be down to just being 100% in my job here, which is being reserve driver and helping them with this year's car, [plus] helping them with next year's car. Just doing my side.

PLUS: Why Albon's F1 dream isn't all over

"There's no actual driving unless something happens. I've got the DTM gig, which I'll do to the best of my ability and on top of that the team know what I am capable of. They would have gotten rid of me, let's be truthful, if they didn't believe in me. So, on my side I know they still trust me, they still have faith in what I can do. And we just have to see how things work out during this year."

Albon's task as the latest driver seeking Red Bull redemption, and these tales are really piling up, is well defined - be the best reserve/simulator driver he can, and shine when on DTM duty.

But the story having a successful conclusion even if he aces those jobs is made harder if all four Red Bull/AlphaTauri drivers do well in 2021. Daniel Ricciardo's departure decision set Red Bull on its current driver conundrum path in 2018, perhaps a similar exit is the break Albon will need.