Alexander Albon: I was thinking ‘don’t spin it’ before spin

Alexander Albon joked he was focused on not spinning on his out-lap in testing, moments before rotating his Toro Rosso Formula 1 car into the gravel.

Albon, making his official Formula 1 test debut, spun exiting Turn 4 during the initial minutes of running, beaching his STR14 in the gravel, causing a red flag.

Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost exonerated Albon of blame and the Anglo-Thai went on to finish fourth, a second behind pacesetting ex-GP3 rival Charles Leclerc, completing 132 laps.

“I was thinking “don’t spin it” but that was exactly what I did,” he laughed.

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“The morning was a little bit difficult but, to be honest, I didn’t want to think too much about it when I got back into the car.

“I just said to myself, “hey, the track is really cold and Kimi [Raikkonen] did the same yesterday”, so that kind of reassured me a little bit.

“In the end, it was OK, definitively a good experience but the high-speed stuff is still new to me, a bit of a shock but I’m enjoying it.

“I did the filming day in Misano previously, so it wasn’t a total shock and, of course, we’ve been doing quite a lot of simulator, for this reason, so the feeling was that I knew what the car could do from the simulator but, of course, when you have the G-forces and the actual speed going, it takes a little while to get used to.

“In your mind, you know what you can do with the car, but actually doing it it’s a different story.

“It took a while and I’m not right there yet, there’s a bit of margin, but with these cars, there’s so much grip, so much braking power that even though I felt quite comfortable straight away, finding the right balance and being really connected takes a bit more time.”

Team-mate Daniil Kvyat will resume testing duties for Toro Rosso on Wednesday.