Alexander Albon, the British-Thai driver, has been promoted to the Red Bull Formula One team and will make his first appearance for them in the next round at Spa. In an unexpected decision, the 23-year-old still in his debut F1 season, will replace Pierre Gasly, who has been demoted into Albon’s seat with Red Bull’s sister squad Toro Rosso having underperformed so far this season.

Albon has competed in 12 races with Toro Rosso this season and impressed while Gasly has not in what is his first year with Red Bull. After the last round in Hungary, Red Bull’s team principal Christian Horner said there was no intent to replace the Frenchman. However, he did also note that Gasly had not been “in the mix at all”.

Indeed, Gasly has not only been way off the pace of his teammate Max Verstappen but of other drivers around him. He has 63 points to Verstappen’s 181 and is only five points in front of McLaren’s Carlos Sainz, who is driving a car demonstrably not as quick as the Red Bull. It will not be lost on Red Bull that last season they opted to bring Gasly rather than Sainz into their team.

Verstappen has won two of the last four races and Red Bull are genuinely in a fight with Ferrari for second place. They trail the Scuderia by just 44 points. Gasly’s best finish this season was fourth at Silverstone. Crucially, he has not been able to play a part in a team role supporting Verstappen.

Albon, who was third in last years F2 championship, has 16 points. He produced outstanding performances to go from last to tenth at the Chinese Grand Prix and took sixth from 17th on the grid in treacherous wet conditions at the Hockenheimring.

Red Bull might have promoted Daniil Kvyat to the seat but the Russian already raced for them in 2015-16 before he was similarly demoted to make room for Verstappen. The team know what he can do so are now assessing Albon before making a decision on who will join Verstappen next year.

“Red Bull are in the unique position of having four talented Formula 1 drivers under contract who can be rotated between Aston Martin Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso,” said a statement. “The team will use the next nine races to evaluate Alex’s performance in order to make an informed decision as to who will drive alongside Max in 2020.”