Banter
Neil
Banter
Albon if and only if he gets same equipment as Max, Red Bull are faster than Merc and if Red Bull give him a good strategy.
That's.. an unpopular opinion. I really like Albon and indeed the car is built around Max, but Max simply might be the only guy right now who has a chance to take the battle to Mercedes this season. It would be quite odd if RBR gave Albon a tricycle to drive after what happened last season, Marko and co can't really afford another guy biting dust in senior team. And Mercedes is actually in a class of its own
We saw what Albon could do when given the favoured strategy, he could've won. Yes Max could've too but if Red Bull had not had reliability issues and everything that happened meant Red Bull could've gotten a double podium. Who knows which Red Bull driver would be ahead of the other if they were given equal strategies. Austria not Styria.
I mean, considering RBR's performance in 1st GP without the context will obviously paint a different picture. Mercedes was clearly faster across both the weekends, but in the first weekend, they had major issues with the wireloom. They almost ended up retiring due to it, and before the safety car, Albon was far adrift of Mercedes and was battling with midfield, he benefitted from the free pit stop. I would even say that Albon SHOULD have won it, fresher softs against older hards on a fragile Mercedes car which had to keep off from the kerbs. Second race was a much more accurate one in terms of performance, Mercedes dominating start to end, no SCs and if anything, Albon did far worse than Verstappen (pulled off a Gasly), he didn't even overtake Verstappen when Max pitted.
I like Albon, but come on, you are overrating him alot here. Just because he came close to winning by some serious luck, doesn't imply that his lack of performance in second race was only Red Bull messing up, that's almost fanboyish LOL.