The F1 driver hero-worshipped by his peers

Most aspiring Formula 1 drivers eventually reach a fork in the road where they realise their desired path leads to oblivion, so they plunge into the wider motorsport world to make their careers.

Alex Albon was there last year despite challenging for the Formula 2 title, so signed a deal to race in Formula E with the Nissan e.dams squad. Two months and six days after that deal was announced, Scuderia Toro Rosso confirmed him as Daniil Kvyat's 2019 Formula 1 team-mate.

It was an unlikely reprieve, but a merited one. Albon may have come into this season as the lowest-profile driver, but he's highly-regarded by his contemporaries. Lando Norris once had a poster of karting star Albon on his wall, while both George Russell and Charles Leclerc talked up the London-born Thai as arguably the best young driver outside of F1 in 2018.

The respect among his near-contemporaries (at 23 he's a little older) is out of kilter with the lack of buzz surrounding Albon for much of his career.

"I'm the driver's driver," jokes Albon when asked about the respect they have for him. "I get on with everyone, so maybe they are just being nice. In the public eye, at least, I didn't look very strong when I was in Formula Renault and Formula 3, I came out of nowhere in GP3, but that's stuck with me - people not really knowing about me.

"When you look at Charles, George and Lando, they won everything and I didn't. I'm definitely not putting it on the teams, but maybe it took me longer to get up to speed in single-seaters so I didn't come in with a bang. But I always felt that if I got the opportunity I could showcase what I can do, and 
it's been a good start to the season."

Scoring a point in two of his first three races was just that. Particularly eye-catching was his charge from a pitlane start in the Chinese Grand Prix to 10th, with a car built up around a spare monocoque following a big accident during Saturday practice when he ran wide exiting the final corner and kept his foot in a little too long.

Albon has looked confident behind the wheel and isn't afraid to have the car moving around mid-corner. On that occasion he was over-confident, but to race so well the next day required tremendous mental strength under pressure that would crush many.

The Toro Rosso is a brisk midfield car, but never looks the easiest to drive from trackside. Both Albon and, to a lesser extent, Kvyat, usually have the rear moving around as the Toro Rosso allows them to carry good speed into the corners without ever looking entirely planted.

That also caught Albon out when he had a less serious crash during FP1 in Melbourne. For several laps, the rear was coming round in the final part of the Turn 1/2 right-left flick and eventually it went too far, pitching him into the wall.

Asking him about this later that weekend, Albon's honesty was refreshing as he explained that he was gaining more and more confidence and began to believe the rear would come back to him no matter what - until it didn't.

His willingness to talk about it in depth, showing he had confronted the error and understood it without letting it drag him down, was striking.

Albon describes himself as "historically a smooth driver", and while like most drivers he benefits from a strong front end and planted rear on entry, he has realised the best way to get the Toro Rosso to carry the speed is to work it hard mid-corner.

Albon's resilience and very deliberate ability to cut out the unnecessary distractions and focus on the simple process of driving is a potent weapon.

In elite sport, many athletes have to work hard to place themselves into the more relaxed mindset required to get the best out of themselves.

Mistakes, after all, clash with the ego that says they are the best so can be hard to put behind you. Albon is not, as he puts it, "sipping a gin and tonic before I drive", but he's also not putting undue pressure on himself. Perhaps this has been baked into his psyche through cold, hard experience.

After all, his big chance came from the man who dropped him from the Red Bull young driver scheme after a disappointing first season of car racing in Formula Renault in 2012, which almost resulted in Albon quitting - Dr Helmut Marko. Albon knows his only chance now is to impress a hard taskmaster who has already given up on him once.

Albon's season has been streaky, but you'd expect that from a rookie.

Small errors, notably in qualifying, have compromised his weekends, but the underlying pace has been good. In a driver's first season, you look for the peaks of performance and then, as experience builds, expect them to be achieved more consistently.

That is what Albon needs to do if he is to have a case for promotion to Red Bull's main team. That he's in a small minority among the 20 drivers on the grid in not having strung together a title-winning campaign in junior single-seaters suggests this is the challenge that could make or break his F1 career.

The 2016 season, when Albon was team-mate to Charles Leclerc in GP3, supports this. Leclerc won the title with Albon second. There, consistency made the difference.

"That was one of the coolest seasons I've ever had," he says. "I had three incredibly quick team-mates and every corner someone else was quicker than the other. Our theoretical best lap times were off the chart! Charles was the most consistent, but it was always about tenths.

"His race pace was strong, which always surprised me because he is aggressive and uses a lot of brake to rotate the car, so it's always moving. He has incredible feeling on the brakes.

"You couldn't be quicker than him in a corner by even half-a-tenth and sometimes he'd do laps where he braked incredibly late, the car moves around like crazy and it's like 'wow' as he would always come out quick. We all had our different styles, I was the smoother guy, about minimum speed and exits, but he would be more about entry."

It remains to be seen whether Albon can find that last fraction needed to go from what he has already proved himself to be - a very capable midfield F1 driver - into something more. But the raw material appears to be there.

Now, it's a question of if he can find the cutting edge needed to deliver the consistency that will be the key to him fulfilling his prodigious potential.