Alex Albon admits ‘it’s a shame’ what people are now saying about Max Verstappen

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Alex Albon doesn’t like what he’s hearing about former teammate and reigning world champion Max Verstappen.

Verstappen has won the last three world championships and is the overwhelming favourite to make it four in a row this year.

But Albon has taken exception to one thing people are saying about the Dutchman.

The pair raced together at Red Bull for 18 months after Albon replaced Pierre Gasly midway through the 2019 season.

The Bulls subsequently decided to drop the Thai driver for 2021 and bring in Sergio Perez.

Verstappen has won the first two races of the 2024 season in comfortable fashion, having rattled off 19 victories from 22 rounds last year.

If he wins the Australian Grand Prix next time out, he’ll match his own record of 10 straight triumphs from last year.

Alex Albon challenges Max Verstappen complaints

Speaking on the Beyond The Grid podcast, Albon rejected the notion that Verstappen’s dominance was making the sport ‘boring’.

Before the season started, pundit and ex-F1 driver David Coulthard argued that ‘too much success kind of takes away the magic’.

But Albon was eager to point out that we’re currently seeing one of the ‘tightest grids’ of all time.

There were just over two seconds between Verstappen’s pole time in Jeddah last time out and the slowest lap from Albon’s teammate Logan Sargeant.

“In some ways it’s a shame to see comments about Max and it being a boring season, because it’s totally not, at least from my perspective.

“You take him out of the equation, you have one of the best grids, the tightest grids ever in Formula 1.

“Even if you include Max, it’s still the tightest field in Formula 1.”

Who can stop Verstappen and Red Bull?

While the championship is already looking like something of an inevitability for Verstappen, his rivals will at least hope to make things more competitive.

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who took the chequered flag in Singapore, was the only non-Red Bull driver to win a race last season.

Verstappen predicted before the campaign began that he would win 50% of this year’s Grands Prix.

And Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur is confident that the team will be in contention to win multiple races.

Star driver Charles Leclerc expects the Prancing Horse to put more ‘pressure’ on the Milton Keynes outfit if they continue their current development path.