How Alex Albon is supporting Yuki Tsunoda’s F1 turnaround

With Albon’s DTM commitments coming to an end, the Thai driver has been pictured at the majority of the races.

Speaking at this weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix, Tost explained how Albon is supporting Tsunoda in a bid to make further progress in F1.

“Alex comes to Yuki, talks with him, explains him the track, or whatever Yuki is asking,” Tost said.

“It's a talk between drivers and I think that's quite positive for Yuki because he gets a lot of knowledge from Alex, and therefore, it's been very positive.”

With Albon acting as Red Bull’s official test and reserve driver, Tost said that it made sense for AlphaTauri to call on its former driver’s F1 experience and knowledge.

“Alex is in the Red Bull family and he didn't have so many free weekends, because he was running in the DTM, but we said when he is at the track that he should support Yuki,” Tost explained.

“We told Yuki, please ask him questions so that he can help you to understand everything better. It works very well.”

After making an impressive start to the season in Bahrain, Tsunoda’s form dipped with a series of crashes and shunts during the mid-part of the season.

As a result, Red Bull moved Tsunoda to live near AlphaTauri’s factory in Faenza, under the watch of team principal Tost.

Tsunoda’s form has picked up as of late with a return to the top 10 at the United States Grand Prix and Tost feels that the Japanese rookie is making good progress.

“Yuki is improving and getting better and better. He has a better understanding of the engineering side of the car,” Tost added.

“He has a lot of meetings with his engineers in Faenza, to get a better picture about everything and to get a better feeling also in the car, and what's going on.

“I was surprised this morning by his performance because we must not forget he is here the first time, and he showed really a good run in FP1.

“Although he must start from the back of the grid because we changed the power unit, with this performance here you can overtake, so I am quite optimistic that he can also score some points.”