Albon hoped he could steal Verstappen's 'next race engineer'

As GPblog reported earlier today, James Urwin, Albon's current race engineer, is set to move into a factory-based role within Williams. The change is intended to give him a better work-life balance while allowing the British team to retain his extensive experience within the organization.

Hart was previously linked with a move to Williams. De Telegraaf also reported before that he is set to replace Gianpiero Lambiase as Verstappen's race engineer at Red Bull Racing.

GPblog has since learned that the proposed move to Williams was never formalized and was based on speculation.

When GPblog asked Albon about Hart at the Hungaroring, the Thai-British driver said: "We obviously went for Tom, I think Tom's a great guy, a great engineer, but we've also got ideas in place.

"James, my current race engineer, he's going to go more towards a factory-based role, which I think he's going to be amazing at, and for us it's now just trying to find someone who we can kind of take that process on take the engineering role from James next year.

He added: "No, [I didn't ask him myself]. We kind of had a list of people on our roster of ‘who do we want to get?’ Of course, Tom was someone that I saw as a name and I thought, ‘yeah, Tom's great.'"

Albon has experienced a difficult season so far in 2026. He is currently 16th in the drivers' standings with five points scored so far this season. He has not finished inside the top ten since the Monaco Grand Prix.