As Method 1 headed into the summer season break, Alexander Albon featured within the newest episode of F1’s Grill the Grid, the place he could not resist taking a light-hearted swipe at his former workforce, Pink Bull.
Whereas the Method 1 paddock enjoys its summer season break, the drivers have swapped racing for a unique form of competitors within the newest version of Grill the Grid. The favored sequence places the complete grid by a spread of entertaining challenges, with factors awarded throughout a number of episodes. Within the latest episode, the duty was to work out the identification of Method 1 drivers, previous and current, by trying on the groups they’ve raced for all through their careers.
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When it was the Williams driver’s flip to determine the driving force who had raced for simply two groups, Toro Rosso and Pink Bull, Max Verstappen didn’t instantly come to thoughts. As an alternative, Albon got here out with a joke that left these round him laughing.
“I used to be like, ‘There is no driver that had this. Everybody’s been fired at this level,'” he mentioned, joking about Pink Bull’s lengthy historical past of drivers, himself included, who had been finally dropped after only some months as a result of their performances weren’t thought of ok.
Picture: Race Footage
Albon hoped he might steal Verstappen’s ‘subsequent race engineer’
Williams must look elsewhere for Alex Albon’s subsequent race engineer after lacking out on Tom Hart. Talking to GPblog on the Hungaroring, the Thai-British driver revealed the workforce had focused Hart earlier than he opted to stay with Pink Bull, the place he’s anticipated to interchange Gianpiero Lambiase on Max Verstappen’s aspect of the storage.
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The search comes as James Urwin prepares to step away from his present trackside duties and transition right into a factory-based position inside Williams. Albon defined that the workforce has already drawn up a shortlist of attainable replacements and that he has been concerned within the means of figuring out candidates. Whereas Hart was one of many names Williams hoped to safe, the transfer by no means materialised, leaving the Grove outfit to proceed its search forward of subsequent season.
“We clearly went for Tom, I feel Tom’s an ideal man, an ideal engineer, however we have additionally obtained concepts in place. James, my present race engineer, he’ll go extra in direction of a factory-based position, which I feel he’ll be wonderful at, and for us it is now simply looking for somebody who we will form of take that course of on take the engineering position from James subsequent yr.
“In fact, we’ve got just a few folks in thoughts, however sure, I feel each person who we have form of gone out to is somebody I’ve additionally been concerned with. We form of had an inventory of individuals on our roster of ‘who can we need to get?’ In fact, Tom was somebody that I noticed as a reputation and I believed, ‘yeah, Tom’s nice.'”
