Red Bull stays tight-lipped, but Albon confirms engineer news

The Grove-based outfit thought it had secured Hart to replace James Urwin, who will take on a factory-based role at Williams at his own request, as GPblog reported earlier today.

In the end, Hart, who is highly respected within the Austrian team, decided to remain with Red Bull Racing and will therefore not become Albon's race engineer. The decision has been met with disappointment at Williams, although the team wishes the British engineer well in his new role at the Milton Keynes-based outfit.

GPblog asked Albon about the collapsed deal, after which the Thai-British driver was the first to openly confirm that it fell through. “We obviously went for Tom, I think Tom's a great guy, a great engineer, but we've also got ideas in place."

Williams is now forced to look elsewhere, since Urwin will definitely not continue in his current position.

Albon confirmed that there are alternatives on the table. “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.”

Albon confirmed that he is actively involved in deciding who should succeed Urwin. However, he did not mean to suggest that Hart was his personal choice.