Albon did not want to ‘over defend’ against Hamilton in Brazil clash

Alexander Albon says he did not want to “over defend” against Lewis Hamilton prior to their Brazilian Grand Prix collision and admits he could have handled the situation differently.

Albon was on course to land his maiden podium appearance and a possible Red Bull 1-2 behind teammate and victor Max Verstappen at Interlagos until late contact with Hamilton on the penultimate lap sent him into a spin that dropped him down to 14th.

Hamilton received a five-second time penalty after shouldering responsibility and apologising to Albon for the incident. When addressing the media ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix season finale, Albon conceded he could have approached the corner in a different manner.

Asked if he would have done anything differently in hindsight, Albon replied: “It’s one of those things.

“If you over defend in a corner like that, you are just going to open yourself up more going into Turn 1, you don’t want to lose time in places you don’t want to lose time.

“Because if your car has better speed and you start over defending everywhere, you are going to get overtaken.

“I think definitely just the way it happened, it felt like if I did it again I could have opened up the gap and been a bit more wider in the corner but in the moment it was just one of those things.

“Of course I would have preferred there not to have been contact.”

Despite the heartbreak of missing out on his best-ever result in F1, the British-born Thai driver insisted he is “not too disappointed” after reflecting on his performance over the weekend as a whole.

“On my side I’m not too disappointed, it’s more for the team,” Albon explained.

“It would have been good points for us but in the end for Max it was good because the two Ferraris didn’t score.

“It would have been nice for everyone and nice for myself, but when I look at the weekend as a whole it was a good weekend. There were still some areas to improve but there are more positives.

“Of course there was the crash, but that would be a negative way of looking at how the weekend went. It can happen, it’s racing.”

Additional reporting by Julianne Cerasoli.