Albon ticks all the right boxes in first session for Red Bull

The FP1 timesheets show that Albon was a mere 0.o77 of a second shy of Max Verstappen's best effort, this on the Thai driver's first session in the RB15.

Indeed these are very early days in the 23-year-old's Red Bull career, but the first box he had to tick was done with ease as he will no doubt be boosted by the result, and his team will be pleasantly surprised by their driver's first steps.

In contrast, the man he replaced, Pierre Gasly was on the back foot from the moment he pranged the car during testing early in the year. He never quite recovered his confidence after that, his racecraft went AWOL and his performances mortally overshadowed by Verstappen.

Albon was swamped from the minute he set foot in the Spa paddock, the unlikely hero in the media spotlight as one of only six drivers in a car capable of winning a Grand Prix.

He remarked amid the hullabaloo, "Twelve months ago, I was fighting for a seat in F1, and now I'm here. It's nuts. It is quite laughable when I look back at it. The first thing I did was call my Mum and Dad. It was a journey we all took. From as early as 2012, I don't think my career has been very, er, fluid, let's say."

As for the task at hand this weekend, he said, “We just go into the weekend more focused on the race pace, which also means more laps. That will be the target, and that feeling straight away into qualifying, it will be a different atmosphere."

At Spa this morning, in dark blue for the first time Albon was as fluid as he needed to be and more. Just maybe Red Bull have accomplished their mission to find a junior driver to help Verstappen take the fight to their rivals, while keeping their Dutch star honest which Gasly was incapable of doing in the first 12 races of this season.

Time will tell how the new kid in the bullpen shapes up...