Albon blames Hamilton for nothing: 'It's all on me'

Albon misses the podium

In a year and a half, Albon failed to convince Red Bull Racing's management that he was the man to have alongside Max Verstappen. He performed reasonably consistently, but real peaks were absent. It wasn't until Mugello in mid-2020 that he scored his first podium, only to repeat it in Bahrain at the end of the year.

However, Albon could have been on the podium twice before. In Brazil 2019, he was driving in second place when Lewis Hamilton tapped him off the track and in 2020, Albon was third when he tried to overtake Hamilton on the outside at the Red Bull Ring, but this time he was pushed off the track. However, Albon does not see those as crucial moments in his time at Red Bull.

No blame for Hamilton

''If I had achieved better results it would have put things in a completely different mindset. My first or second race in Austria I was getting bashed like 'Where's yor performance? Where's your laptime?'. A result like that (a podium) would have quietened it all down and I would have the next few races with a bit less of that noise. Because those noises started from the very first race of the year, it was there. It was quite intense,'' says Albon in the Beyond The Grid F1 Podcast.

Despite that outside pressure and Hamilton's mistakes, the Thai doesn't blame the seven-time world champion for anything. ''For sure it (a podium) would have helped, but I would never, ever blame Lewis for what's happened to me. It's all on me,'' the Williams driver concludes critically of himself.