Alexander Albon has blamed his Australian Grand Prix opening practice crash on "inexperience" and "hot tyres".
The Toro Rosso driver span at Turn 2, brushed the barrier with the rear of the car and then made contact with the front-wing, knocking it off, before coming to a rest in the middle of the track. That forced a red flag, although he was able to get going again and returned to the pits.
Despite the error, Albon remained positive about his first official Formula 1 practice outing.
"The day started off OK, getting up to speed with the car and the circuit. The circuit is really cool, bumpy – that was a surprise – but I enjoyed it. I was growing with confidence, getting better but I was caught out a little bit by the spin at the end of that run.
"I think it was just a little bit of inexperience and the tyres being a bit too hot – kind of a combination of the two. But nothing really too serious and, in the end, it was quite a good FP1."
The Thai driver insists the incident hasn't knocked his confidence, adding: "Not really. It's behind me now but, of course, at the beginning of FP2 I took it a bit steadier going into Turn 1, but for the rest of the circuit, not really. If you can forget about it, that's the best way to handle these situations. I realised what went wrong, addressed it and moved on."
Albon experienced another issue during FP2 when his glove got stuck in the headrest, forcing him to abandon the lap he was on.
"I had never had that before," he explained. "I was going through Turn 11 and when I started to turn into Turn 12 I couldn't open the steering as my left pinky got stuck and I couldn't turn the steering! So I had to open the left hand and do Turn 12 only with the right hand, so I had to abort the lap after that.
"It was nothing too serious but it caught me by surprise. I was quite surprised and thinking, 'no, not the wall again' but, in the end it was nothing too serious. Now we just have to see if we can get more clearance to my hands."
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