Albon: Being dropped by Red Bull ‘killed me’

Dropped by Red Bull at the end of 2020, Alex Albon says his year on the sidelines “killed” him, it was “terrible”.

Albon has had an intense Formula 1 career already, and 2022 is only his third season on the grid.

He was handed a shock F1 call up to AlphaTauri in 2019, then known as Toro Rosso, and found himself promoted to the senior team after just 12 races.

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But, a year and a half later, he was without a race seat and had been demoted to a test driver role.

“It killed me. It killed me, it was terrible,” he told the Beyond The Grid podcast.

“It was one of those things – it got announced that I wasn’t going to be a racing driver pretty late, I think it was December.

“They still believed in me and still trusted me, Christian [Horner] and Helmut [Marko], everyone at Red Bull, and I still have a great relationship with them.

“But on my side, it was more or less like: ‘I want to be in F1. I feel like I’m the hungriest driver I know, how can I get back into it?'”

Alex Albon on battling his way back to the grid, and the "inner peace" he's experiencing as a @WilliamsRacing driver #F1BeyondTheGrid

— Formula 1 (@F1) April 27, 2022

Instead of letting his disappointment weigh him down, Albon