Races where Albon performed as expected can be counted on one hand
F1 News
Red Bull Racing had the second-best car on the field last season. While the Racing Point seemed even faster in the first half of the season, that team was nowhere near consistent enough to pose a threat to the Milton Keynes team. However, Alexander Albon ended up where he should be only a handful of times.
Albon seemed to start the season energetically, with two convincing weekends in Austria. At the Spielberg circuit, he even seemed to be able to win the first race for a while and during the second weekend, he came fourth, the place which was considered a minimum given the speed and ambitions of Red Bull.
Albon below par more than three-quarters of the time
After that weekend he only managed to reach that minimum three times and the two podium places actually do not even count as races in which he lived up to expectations. In Tuscany, Albon was lucky that half the field had crashed and then had the greatest difficulty to get past Ricciardo. In Bahrain, he was lucky that Bottas and Perez fell behind him.
After Austria, you can actually say that Albon only drove around in Turkey and Abu Dhabi in a way that benefited both Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen. In Turkey, he performed well on a wet track and had a good chance of keeping the honour of Red Bull high after Verstappen was spun. In Abu Dhabi, he made sure that Mercedes could not make a second pit stop.
In less than a quarter of the races, Albon scored the minimum expectations and that makes Red Bull's decision to replace him only logical. Now the question is whether Perez is the right replacement.
This article was written and originally published by Pelle on the Dutch edition of GPblog.com.