Alexander Albon insists he holds no hard feelings against Red Bull for his treatment in 2012, when he was dropped from their junior programme.
The Anglo-Thai racer will line-up on the grid this Sunday in his first race for Red Bull after being promoted over the summer break, replacing a lacklustre Pierre Gasly who takes up Albon's vacant Toro Rosso seat.
It's quite the change of fortunes compared to 2012 when Albon was dropped from Red Bull's young driver programme, a decision that almost led to him hanging up his overalls.
"I was on the brink of stopping racing all together," he said in an interview last year.
However, speaking ahead of his recent promotion, he insists there are no hard feelings as Red Bull had every right to drop him.
"Back then I was not driving very well," he told the official Formula 1 website. "There was no reason to keep me on board, so no, there's none of that [hard feelings]."
Dr Helmut Marko, who made the original decision to drop him, followed by the decisions to place him at Toro Rosso and then promote him to Red Bull, described Albon as the "surprise of the season", to which Albon said: "It's nice that I'm a surprise to most people. I would almost, in a way, wish it wasn't a surprise! But it's nice that people are happy with how it's going."
The 23-year-old, who will drive alongside Max Verstappen for the remainder of the season, underwent a seat fitting at Red Bull's Milton Keynes factory on Monday.
