Red Bull’s Alexander Albon admits he could have backed off more in the moments that preceded his heavy shunt with the barriers during FP2 in Bahrain.
Rounding the final corner of the circuit midway through the session, Albon ran wide and lost control of his RB16, which sent him into a spin towards the wall.
The Thai-British driver was checked and cleared by on-site medical staff, however his car was badly damaged in the incident.
Speaking after the session, Albon says he was surprised by how little grip was present, but says he should have eased off more than he did to prevent the crash.
“It was just one of those things, [I] should have pulled out of it really,” Albon said. “I was a bit surprised by the lack of grip, let’s say, but it was just one of those things.
“It was quite a difficult, awkward angle, those crashes. Not fun but I’m all good. I did back out but not enough basically.
“When you have one tyre on the astro and one tyre on the grip, that’s when the tank slappers happen.”
Prior to his crash, Albon said was day was going “OK”, but he was not satisfied with the performance of Pirelli’s 2021 tyres, which all drivers sampled throughout the day.
“I would say in FP1 the car was feeling pretty good straightaway,” Albon said. “Then in FP2, tried a couple of things that didn’t quite work out but more on the driving actually, just getting up to speed.
“The track grips up a lot and weirdly on the prototype tyres, they are not very fun to drive on. So we’ll see how it goes next year but just getting up to speed with it.
“They are slow and they are not really grippy. I reckon they are over a second off what we have right now, which doesn’t bode too well. We’ll see how it goes.”
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