Lewis Hamilton, Alexander Albon, Red Bull Ring, 2020

Albon: I’d make the same move on Hamilton again

2020 F1 season

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Alexander Albon says he has no regrets about the overtaking move he attempted on Lewis Hamilton in the Austrian Grand Prix which led to the two colliding.

Hamilton was penalised for the collision, which dropped Albon out of the points places late in the race. Albon doesn’t believe Hamilton intentionally collided with him and said it was just “bad circumstances” that the pair had made contact twice in the least three races.

“We didn’t speak afterwards,” said Albon in today’s FIA press conference. “There wasn’t too much for me to say, I think, it is what it is.

“I’m sure Lewis didn’t intend to make contact. But not too much to say, really, we’re just focused straight away into race two.”

Albon insisted he wasn’t at fault for the collision. “The way the corner is, the exit point of where you take that corner is not where it looks like,” he said.

“A certain camera angle, where I saw people saying ‘there’s a car length to go still’, you don’t exit at that point, the exit point’s a lot later into the corner just because turn four is quite long. So unless I kind of drove up to the edges of track and then turned again, that’s the only real way to give myself more space.”

The Red Bull driver said he wouldn’t hesitate to attempt a similar move in the future. “I’d do the same thing again,” he said. “It has to be done.

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“You can’t wait around, especially when they’re at a tyre disadvantage. There’s no waiting to be done, really, because obviously we knew they had a pace advantage and it was just a matter of time until the front tyres warmed up. So there’s no real regret to that.”

Despite his penalty for the incident, Hamilton still finish the race in fourth place, while Albon dropped out of the points and later retired.

“At the very beginning it’s a bit frustrating because you’re the one to lose out in the situation,” Albon added. “But I think just to make it fair, the way it’s ruled is that they want all the penalties to apply the same way, so no matter what the crash or consequences. I’m kind of happy that that is the situation.

“Of course it just means that we lost out a bit more than we would have liked.”

Albon’s team mate Max Verstappen also believes Hamilton didn’t deliberately cause the collision.

“It was just that’s unfortunate that happened,” said Verstappen. “I think it was a great move for Alex you go around the outside there, I think not many people do that.”

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2020 F1 season

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46 comments on “Albon: I’d make the same move on Hamilton again”

  1. This is what Albon is here to do this year.

    Blinding speed and overtakes. He needs to be spectacular. They can hire Vettel if they want crash every second race.

    1. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
      9th July 2020, 19:30

      @jureo

      Blinding speed and overtakes.

      He’s 0 for 2 there…

    2. @jureo he hasn’t exactly shown “blinding speed” though, at least in qualifying trim.

      With the exception of the 2019 Japanese GP, Albon has consistently been several tenths of a second behind Verstappen – the 2020 Austrian GP is the closest he’s got to Verstappen, and that was “just” being 0.39s slower than Verstappen.

      On raw pace, he managed to be out-qualified by cars from the midfield pack, despite driving a car that should be markedly better than those midfield teams. Similarly, in 2019 there were races where Albon ended up finishing closer to the midfield pack than he did to the driver in front of him, and in Austria I wouldn’t say that his performance was exactly scintillating before the disruption of the safety cars.

      Whilst he initially pulled away from Norris, his performance plateaued a bit later in his stint and, during the last five laps of his first stint, Norris was matching or even slightly bettering Albon’s times – nor, for that matter, was Albon dropping the rest of the midfield pack as the stint wore on.

      Yes, he’s a nice guy and shown some promise, but right now it’s a bit generous to say he’s showing “blinding speed” – when you compare the relative qualifying performance between the top three teams, Albon is currently the one who is lagging behind his team mate the most in raw pace.

      1. @freelittlebirds and anon

        That is kinda my point. They have him there to be great, but he really is not. He’s a midfield driver.

        Vettel atleast used to be quite spectacular, not sure why they wont hire him.
        He’s probably also better than Bottas.

        Mercedes and RBR like to have a medicore #2.

  2. It has to be done

    That’s a good attitude.

  3. I’m a Hamilton fan but I root for Albon every race and really wanted him to get on the podium both times they collided. I remember screaming don’t do it as he started trying to overtake around the outside. It was just unlucky that they touched the way they did. A split second sooner or later and both would have come out fairly unscathed. I hope he continues to be aggressive when the opportunities present themselves. He’s a stand-up guy and a gentleman.

  4. At the beginning I was afraid that Albon would lost his seat quite fast. Well he didn’t have so much experience under his belt. But now I want to see Albon to have a long future in F1. Not many drivers tend to do overtakes or at least try to do them like Albon. This one was just an example of what he will do in the future.

  5. Fair comment AA and good on you. Keep
    up the great work.

  6. I thought this was a racing incident when I saw it live, but having just seen the 360 degree on-board footage of the incident from Albon’s car I’d now go as far as saying Albon is predominantly to blame.

    He can be seen applying more lock just before the collision, bringing the cars closer together and giving Hamilton no time to react.

    If footage from Albon’s car had been available to the stewards (I understand Albon’s on-board wasn’t available) at the time of the incident I’m sure the outcome would have been different. Ironic that.

    1. My believe exactly.
      Albon was accelerating through the corner and forgot about the rear of his car.
      Anyways, if he continues with his new found carefree driving, soon he will see the other side of the stewards who understand driving and responsibility.

      1. No, Hamilton kept going at albon like there was nobody there despite albon being neck to neck, there’s a video of driver61 he is a driving coach for pro racers, he said that although Hamilton didn’t steer to albon, he could steer the car with the pedals and avoid it but he didn’t, he kept accelerating… and also the video of Marc Presley, all points to Hamilton mistake

      2. OOliver ‘he will see the other side of the stewards who understand driving and responsibility.’ Hence the penalty to LH not AA.

    2. @sparkyamg
      The mental gymnastics of Hamilton fans knows no bounds.

      Albon left Hamilton acres of space down the inside, and Hamilton understeered and crashed into him. Albon was also 3/4ths ahead of Hamilton at the point of the colission.

      What Hamilton did to Albon was very similar to what Verstappen did to Ricciardo at Hungary 2017.

      1. @kingshark As I said to Oliver, hence the penalty to LH not AA.

        1. Yes… stewards often had faults

        2. @robbied
          take your blinkers off will ya?
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbleaPvjoYg
          albon was pretty reckless and kept pushing ham off track when he was inside… he pushed ham off track twice both times in the first lap without thinking! either he doesnt use his mirrors or he is just turning himself into his teammate’s copy/assistant!
          what is the excuse really? cold tyres? first lap joker? you get one joker move as far as i know, ham is given 0 whereas albon given twice without receiving no warning! lec in italy was pretty reckless yet, he was let off scot free too… i guess there is different trend toward ham and or mercedes rivals when they tangle with ham/mercedes?

      2. You obviously have problems with your eyes….
        not Hamilton crashed into Albon, but exactly the opposite

      3. @kingshark I’ve been working on my gymnastics during lockdown.

        Just calling it how I see it. One of them had space on outside yet applied more lock just prior to colliding.

        It was akin to clipping the corner of a car you were parked next to whilst pulling out of a parking bay because you thought you’d cleared it but you hadn’t… If you need more of an explanation I’ll fetch my wife as she’s got more experience in that realm.

        1. @sparkyamg
          Hamilton has acres of space on the inside which he did not use, and Albon was still drifting wide on corner exit when Hamilton hit him. He just wasn’t going wide at the same rate as Hamilton.

          1. @kingshark as the defending vehicle Hamilton would have been doing an awful job had he been closer to the apex and made life easy for Albon.

            The point I was making is that the 360 degree footage revealed that right before the collision Albon applied more lock and turned towards Hamilton. There was no onboard footage from Albon’s car available immediately after the incident so this information was new.

            It now appears that had Albon held his line there wouldn’t have been a collision, he wouldn’t have run out of road as he had plenty of room left to play with, and he would likely have gone on to win the race. Rookie error.

    3. It certainly looks like Albon had space on the outside, but I’ve not seen a clear onboard from Albon to say for sure.

      I’m also a Hamilton fan and think Lewis was mainly to blame, but Albon also needs to take some responsibility for overtaking cleanly. It wasn’t exactly a huge surprise to see a car with fairly old, hard tyres that probably weren’t up to temperature struggling to keep a tight line.

      Albon needs to remember if he does try the same thing again, Hamilton is also likely to. This could be valuable experience for him.

    4. Steering, like to drive around the corner?
      Hamilton probably needs to remember that Albon is going to go for it. Hamilton came off much worse than if he’d yielded and the likely Bottas overtake had happened.

  7. Hopefully Hamilton will treat him with a bit more respect next time.

    1. why should he?

    2. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
      9th July 2020, 19:35

      Lol – maybe Lewis should treat Albon like Albon treated Lewis when he tried to overtake in Brazil and twice in Austria… If he got a penalty for a completely legal defense, what would Lewis have gotten if he drove like Albon…

  8. Very good to hear. It is the right attitude to have. Especially after the situations experienced.
    I hope Hamilton heard it too.

    1. Greetings! Well, I’m not that delighted about that mental attitude from ALB, I mean, I really want the kid to fight the big dogs, but bearing in mind that the latter’s car has front tyres and the prior has rear tyres. He simply tryed to close the move too early. His statement is much more Marko or Horner than him.

  9. Adam (@rocketpanda)
    9th July 2020, 18:09

    I think Albon’s great, and clearly has no fear of overtaking anyone – even Hamilton. He’s also willing to take risks, to actually push – which is one of the reasons Gasly’s Red Bull stint was so short. I really do hope to see him do well.

    1. @rocketpanda This is exactly it. I don’t think there’s been much difference in pace between Albon and Gasly, when compared to Verstappen, in either qualifying or the race. But Albon drives that Red Bull with confidence when he’s close to other drivers. He goes for bold overtakes which are usually well measured (actually, he was doing this at Torro Rosso previously and had some great wheels to wheel battles during that stint), and that’s why he’s doing better overall and making a better impression than Gasly did.

      The move he made on Hamilton in Austria did carry some risk, but was also a potentially race winning overtake, since he had to capitalise before his tyre advantage was nullified and also had to chase and pass Bottas. I think the bosses are happier that he went for it than banking 3rd place and then coming back to explain why he didn’t try to win the race from that position.

  10. and that’s exactly why he will never win the races, nor became a champion.
    mounting mindless attack is useless, but perhaps in RB they fire drivers if the are passing IQ test…

    1. No, they fire drivers who are incredibly slow, albon has been better than all drivers in recent years there except verstappen, ricciardo and sainz.

  11. Albon was so far behind Hamilton that Hamilton hit Albon’s rear tyre with his front one.

  12. GtisBetter (@)
    9th July 2020, 19:04

    This is of course what all young drivers say, until they either realize that the most important thing in F1 are points, or they suddenly find themselves replaced.

    1. Hard to imagine AA being replaced for going for more points and the win…you know…what they’re there for, and as supported by Horner who said he had a shot at a race win on Sunday. And supported by LH being the penalized one. AA’s not going to be replaced for racing, and especially not for passing the likes of LH.

      1. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
        9th July 2020, 19:47

        @robbie on the bright side, he can always get free tickets to watch the races next year from Lewis. It’s a win-win for everyone.

      2. GtisBetter (@)
        9th July 2020, 19:56

        We’ll see

      3. “like of LH”
        Yes, behind Hamilton’s shoulders is so many of beautiful overtaking and beautiful position defenses,
        to which Albon has yet to grow and grow…

    2. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
      9th July 2020, 19:46

      “A certain camera angle, where I saw people saying ‘there’s a car length to go still’, you don’t exit at that point, the exit point’s a lot later into the corner just because turn four is quite long. So unless I kind of drove up to the edges of track and then turned again, that’s the only real way to give myself more space.”

      “You can’t wait around, especially when they’re at a tyre disadvantage. There’s no waiting to be done, really, because obviously we knew they had a pace advantage and it was just a matter of time until the front tyres warmed up. So there’s no real regret to that.”

      Yeah but Leclerc moved to the outside and made the pass stick and he also made sure to be ahead of Norris going into the corner. Of course, Albon should have tried to overtake there – just don’t pull a half-baked overtake thinking you got the job done.

    3. This is what I don’t understand. Whoever gets the blame or the penalty, drivers in these situations look to how they could have avoided the situation in the first place. Yet their fans seem to want them to repeat their actions; even if the result is the same, and they end up by the side of the track. Seems the moral high ground is preferred to the podium. In fact when they see a Hamilton back out of a situation, give the crazies a wide berth, or take his time coming through the field from the back they see that as a sign of weakness. Odd way to go racing.

  13. Try the same move and get the same result.

    As they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

  14. A good statement for the needs of journalists. But it is unlikely that Horner and company will long tolerate overtaking with such a result, instead of points for the team.

    1. Pfff, this is exactly what red bull owners want, they’re there to win, not for points, they’re not gonna compete for title anyway.

  15. Keep wrecking your races Albon, lets see how that plays out for you in the long run.

  16. Took guts to overtake on the outside at that turn. Still think he should of waited though. Cant see it going well if anyone tried that.

  17. if Hamilton wants to win this years championship he is going to need to show more care and not punt people off the road. Front wheel to rear wheel contact? Pretty damning to say the least. There is nothing to argue here. Hamilton’s fault hence the penalty. End of debate. Verstappen would be more than happy to see more drivers try to take Hamilton on the outside. If Hamilton behaves the same way then a race ban may not be too far off in the future for Hamilton. I’m sure Hamilton is taking this into consideration. His competitive edge has taken a heavy blow. He will be thinking twice when a car sits on his outside now. More points on my license? Race ban? Heavy blow that is indeed.

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