Albon: Toro Rosso giving me confidence in F1

Alexander Albon says he continues to gain confidence in his rookie Formula 1 season thanks to the support he has received from Toro Rosso.

The British-born Thai driver was due to race in Formula E until he secured a last-minute drive to replace Brendon Hartley at Toro Rosso for 2019.

Despite never turning a wheel in F1 machinery prior to this year, Albon has been one of the standout drivers so far this season, scoring points on two occasions from the opening five rounds of the campaign.

“I think it's been going well - still trying to improve and there's still a lot of room there,” Albon said.

“But I've had a really good feeling with the team from the beginning, and Franz [Tost], and really everyone in the team, especially my engineer - I feel we have a very good relationship.

“They've been really supportive about everything, and of course in F1 you have a lot of tough days but they are always reassuring me and giving me confidence, so I'm happy.

“I feel comfortable really,” he added. I feel more comfortable with the car, mainly driving-wise, in the high-speed stuff. In the low-speed it's all very similar to me.

“Now I know what I want in the car, really, in winter testing it was more about the guys doing a change and me saying 'that was good' or 'that wasn't good'.

“Now it's more like, I know what I want, and that's it. What we've been doing in FP1 and FP2s, we know how we want the car to operate, just trying to get it there, took a bit of time.”

After narrowly missing out on points in the last two races in Baku and Spain, Albon said he is targeting gains in qualifying to secure better starting positions.

“We’ve been very consistent,” Albon explained. “The results haven’t really shown anything, but we’ve been P14, P9, P10, P11 - something like this.

“It’s been a very consistent few races. Not ideally what we want but I’m getting into the swing of it, I just need to work a little bit on myself in qualifying.

“Race pace seems pretty strong always. I think our car is good on race pace, so that’s definitely a strong side for us. We haven’t been using that to our advantage.

“In my eyes I’ve got the pace, at least in short runs, but I just need to hook it up a bit better in qualifying.”