Alexander Albon, Toro Rosso, Circuit de Catalunya, 2019

Albon not to blame for first-lap spin – Tost

2019 F1 season

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Alexander Albon has been cleared of blame for spinning off on his first lap out of the pits during today’s test.

The Toro Rosso rookie, who is having his second run in an F1 car, spun on the approach to turn five after leaving the pits. However team principal Franz Tost said an overnight settings change on the car contributed to the spin.

“It was a steering issue,” he told the official F1 broadcaster. “We changed something from yesterday to today but it didn’t work out as we expected and therefore we changed once more [to] yesterday’s version.”

Tost confirmed Toro Rosso have not set as many targets for today’s test as their main priority is to give Albon time to get used to the car.

“Yesterday Daniil Kvyat was out, he’s an experienced driver, that means we got a lot of data fortunately,” said Tost.

Today we are out the first time with Alex. This is always something special because to driver in a Formula 1 car the first time you really have to prepare the driver in the best possible way. We discussed it a lot also with the engineers and I must say up to now Alex is doing a real good job and I hope that he will continue like this.

“There are not so many test topics today as yesterday with Daniil Kvyat because with Alex we have to drive. We can’t test so many different specifications on the car, for him it’s important to drive to get experience, to learn the car to get familiar with the car.

“Next week is then another story. We will also test different set-ups with him next week. This week is more for him to do as many laps to get experience.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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27 comments on “Albon not to blame for first-lap spin – Tost”

  1. First time ever that Albon drives an F1 car, even if it was his fault we can be a bit comprehensive of the situation.

    1. And he did 4 turns without spinning; better than what could’ve done ;)

      1. that’s a bold statement

  2. Somebody’s missing a or a tag!

    1. Ack, that didn’t work, I tried closing the bold/strong tag :)

      1. watch and learn

  3. damn it

    1. You were saying? :-)
      @johnmilk

      1. @phylyp that you ruined a perfectly good article with this bold

        nonsense

        1. did that work?

          1. @johnmilk – for that line alone. Let’s admit defeat and go drown our sorrows (any excuse will do).

          2. care for some Port @phylyp?

          3. Go for it, @johnmilk, I’ll pop open a beer here. Neither of us are driving, or doing F1 testing (I hope!). ;-)

  4. On-topic – is the standard procedure for a spun and stalled car that it is recovered to the pits? Or can the marshals just get it out of the gravel and let the driver fire it up with the MGU?

    1. @phylyp I’m sure in these kind of tests teams would rather have the car moved to the pits to check the gravel hasn’t damaged radiators, brake ducts and so on.

      1. Thank you, that makes a lot of sense @warheart

        1. I have doubts, but let’s see if this works

          1. oh c’mon

  5. @m-bagattini – join us who thought a /b or /strong would work! ;-)

  6. @phylyp @m-bagattini @jimmi-cynic just came back here to admire how idiotic we look now

        1. @m-bagattini: I feel unaccented and light-fonted

Comments are closed.