We have already written about Red Bull’s polemic 2019 season. It was their first season with Honda and some of us were doubting about the reliability of the Japanese engine because when Honda was with McLaren it was a total mess up and it was maybe the most unreliable engine of all the grid. Instead, the Honda engine with Red Bull resulted very reliable and of course, the Austrian team was happy about it because they didn’t have engine failures as in 2018 with their Renault engine. The Honda engine also resulted as one key factor for the three wins Red Bull achieved in the season (Germany, Austria and Brazil). The engine was the biggest fear of some of us before the season but, the real problem was the drivers.

If we remember, Pierre Gasly started the season with the Senior team after being the whole 2018 season with Toro Rosso developing himself. We all were very optimistic about seeing the Frenchman driving the RB15 but he had big crashed during the pre-season and his confidence was never rebuilt again. The Frenchman completed 12 races with Red Bull and he finished in the top-6 in 5 times out of 12. He finished inside the top 10 in 9 races out of 12. He finished ahead of his teammate (Max Verstappen) 1 time out of 12. It worth saying that Pierre was lapped by Max in Hungary and in Austria, with the same car! Pierre scored a total of 63 points with Red Bull, but he was 118 points behind Max. A surprising fact is that Max scored in 5 races what Pierre scored in 12 races. As a result of his bad contribution to the team, Pierre was demoted once again to Toro Rosso after the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Alex Albon took Pierre Gasly’s seat in his rookie season. The Thai driver completed 9 races with Red Bull, 3 less than Pierre. The decision of promoting Alex in his first year was very polemic but we have already talked about it in the following link: https://www.motorlat.com/notas/f1/14163/red-bull-racing-and-their-polemic-2019-season

Alex scored points in 8 races out of 9. He finished inside the top 6 in 8 races out of 9. Albon scored a total of 76 points with the Senior team, 13 more than Pierre. Let’s remember that Alex finished 9 races and Pierre 12. Alex made some great races, like Belgium in which he finished on P5 with an excellent overtake on Perez on the last lap, he also drove pretty well in Brazil in which he was going to finish P2 (behind Max) but a clash with Lewis Hamilton in the last laps made him spin and unsurprisingly he did not score any points. In my point of view, it was a good decision from RB to promote Alex and demote Pierre, so the Frenchman could recover his confidence with Toro Rosso.