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Alex Albon on what it was really like being teammates with Max Verstappen
Alex Albon on what it was really like being teammates with Max Verstappen
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About this episode
Alex Albon shares candid insights about his Formula One career, comparing his 2023 season to previous years and reflecting on the challenges of racing alongside Max Verstappen. He discusses his evolving relationship with teammate Carlos Sainz, the difficulties of wet racing conditions, and the complexities of race strategies like track position and pit stops. Alex also offers advice to rookies about managing pressure and highlights the importance of experience and communication in racing. The episode blends technical details with personal stories, giving a nuanced look at life on the F1 grid.
Topics:
alex albon career
max verstappen teammate experience
carlos sainz relationship
wet racing challenges
race strategy and track position
rookie advice
driver feedback and communication
f1 car setup
visibility in rain
pit stop tactics
Cars:
Dodge Charger
We're joined once again by Williams driver Alex Albon, who sat down for a chat about what it's really been like to drive in F1 this season. From planning race strategies at wildly different circuits, to his relationship with teammate Carlos Sainz and his advice to rookies taking their first pressured steps in the sport, it's a fascinating conversation with one of the most open drivers on the grid!
Plus, ever wondered if the F1 drivers disagree with our driver ratings episodes after a race? Well, Alex is here to reveal all!
We've added extra P1 live shows in Australia next year, with Adelaide tickets now on sale! To grab your tickets for those or any of our shows this year in the UK, Ireland and North America, click here: tix.to/p1live
You can listen to an extended version of every race review episode over on our Patreon! You'll also access to every P1 episode ad-free, early access to tickets & merch, and access to our Discord server where you can chat with us and other F1 fans! Click here to sign up now: http://patreon.com/mattp1tommy
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Hello everybody and welcome back. We are here with myself, Tommy and Alex Albon. Yes, again,
I don't know which episode is going on. First, but I've said again, so I've ruined it now.
We've got some quick fire questions for you, Alex, from lots of fans. We've got some from
ourselves as well. We are also fans, of course. Ready for this? I am ready. Okay, perfect.
First up, do you consider this your best season in Formula One or was it 2023?
I think driving wise and consistently wise this year. But it's all so relative and I wish
people can understand how relative it is. The car is way more consistent this year.
How often do you have a race and you go, I've got absolutely everything out of that
and I'm not getting the plauders for it. Exactly. And then we go into the Tommy and Matt
racings and we've got a rank of four. This is the thing they watch. Oh, no, they watch.
Oh, no, Andrea is over. Cancel driver. This is the thing there and we've asked a few F1 drivers
this. You have the best race of your life. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure it was
users that said this. Thee Fish ninth in a sprint once and you just said, well,
that's all I could do because the top eight are locked out. Yes, exactly that. And I did that
thing in Baku and it was like, no one knows really. And even your own team don't know.
And it's a truly personal opinion, maybe, but you know deep down how much you've got
out of it. There are weekends where I finish fifth this year and there's weekends
where I finished seventh or ninth and my ninth place finish was better than my fifth place
finish in terms of driving and executing the weekend. So yeah, it happens like that.
Okay. Yeah. If you just give us a heads up next time and be like,
guy, I know I finished 30. That was a 10 out of 10 factor. Then we're like, 10.
Hungry, that P20 coloring.
My daughters are pretty dear to win the race. I was gutted. Did you see that clip?
No. We have a family top three and I was, I had quite a big lead in the family top three.
So I got my three year old daughter to predict where she just, she's still,
you know, because she's three, just pointing at drivers and she picked you to win.
And then when you qualified 20, it has like, oh,
last the first challenge. Is it more satisfying this year? We mentioned about 2023
that you're kind of delivering against a stronger teammate as well as opposed to maybe a rookie.
Does that fit give you more satisfaction? Maybe vindication. Yeah. I find that I've always
been performing well, especially since I returned back into F1 after the willing, the Red Bulls stint.
And I have been getting better and better every year. I've been improving myself on track,
off track, whatever you want to say. But I don't know, maybe it's great to have someone
who's a proven track record. It helps me, you know, I'm not worried about that.
It's good for me as well. I actually wanted it. I wanted to see how am I against,
you know, after all these years, after Max, can I, can I cast it against, against the top
drivers and then hopefully I can. Yeah. Lovely stuff. Question from P1 Patreon member,
CrazyCasper3112. How has your relationship with Carlos Sines improved from being teammates
and what is the atmosphere in the team like? I'll be honest, we've started off immediately
in a good place. It's, we've got better as teammates in terms of understanding each other.
But the communication has always been super open. And actually I would say most
teammates probably go the other way. Once it gets competitive, they kind of close out. Whereas for
us, we've, we're, I would like to say, I think we were mostly the most open
teammate pairing on the grid in terms of a debrief. We're not hiding anything,
which is great because we, we say it all the time, but we are looking to be a top team.
We're not here to finish as great as fifth and sixth and seventh of being,
we want to be up there and being able to say, you know, we're disappointed with a P5, P6. So
the more we can give back to the team and, and open the, speed up the development process,
we will. Because actually we've signed relatively long contracts. We don't, we don't
know why. No point fighting against each other now, is that? Speaking of teammates,
obviously you mentioned your teammates with Max Verstappen. Yes. He's got obviously that
reputation of being a bit of a teammate killer if you like. Did you learn anything from your time
with him, or was it all just horrible? I wasn't, I wasn't in the headspace, just
I was so focused on myself at the time to improve and didn't really have the experience
to digest it all in the moment. So even if, let's say, even if I went through
the same thing I did now, I'd be able to kind of really focus on, okay, where is he
truly gaining his lap time and why, how is he able to execute and be so consistent with
with a car that felt to me so, so peaky. But yeah, I did learn, I learned his raw speed and I
learned, sounds a really weird thing to say, but why is the car that he drives quick to
drive? Like what is it about going in that setup direction gets lap time? Because I'm guessing before
that you'd never want to set up a car like he does. Yeah, exactly that, exactly that. And then I
remember when I first went to Williams, I was like, well, this car is way more stable, even
though it's a Williams, it's way more stable, let's say, but it's not always quick. You're
losing lap time in certain corners because it's too stable, let's say. That's a very basic one,
but that could carry through the Williams. And so we kind of pushed it more towards a
bit more of an easier car and we got more lap time out of it. And it still holds to this day and even
with Carlos, we think the Ferrari is also not the easiest car to drive. And kind of when he
first came in, it was like, okay, now we're, I think he was pretty happy with it, the Williams
car, as soon as he joined in, he said, it's not that balance limited. And I feel like I've
learned a lot in that process. I don't think if I had that experience with Max, would I have,
if, for example, if Carlos joined the team, he would have gone, or this car feels way too
different to what a Ferrari feels like. You know, we kind of close that gap, if that makes
sense. That's really cool insight. Next question comes in from Penangu Jan. Would you
agree that if a race is delayed due to rain for more than one hour, the driver will be racing
with Lego cars? Why not? As long as Lego will pay us. I think that we just need to be more
proactive in our course. Like, if we see it raining, I know we have support series and whatnot,
but can we preempt these things a bit better? And we were saying that it feels like quite a,
you know, an old procedure that's just always there of like, okay, stop raining. Then we
have 15 minute window where everybody gets ready. It almost feels like you need to find
the gap in the radar, go, that's going to stop in 15 minutes, get everybody ready.
Exactly that. And then start the race and move on. So yeah, I mean, I know it's not easy. And
there's all these TV, big picture things that we were not involved in. But I mean, it's
gone serious. But let's just do the Lego cars. That's what we said, though, of it must be
frustrating. Obviously, yeah, you have all these TV rights, but as a fan, you're there for the Formula
One, and it must be frustrating to watch an entire Formula T race that runs absolutely fine. And then
you're there for the main event and you've delayed for like two hours. Exactly. Let us have the
priority slot and the F2 races can have the 15 minute race. What do you think the solution is
to F1 racing in the wet? Why is it so difficult now? Yeah, I said something which people
didn't enjoy, but but no one knows what it's like. So it's really hard. If every driver, including the
old school ones, you know, someone like a Fernando is saying, we just can't see anything, you really
just have to take our word for it. We really can't see anything. And we've seen huge crashes.
And we've seen we've seen, you know, some of the worst crashes, life ending crashes, where
the visibility is being so bad. I can tell you, there's been numerous races even this
year, where from from the back of this room to to where the end of the room is, which is kind of
where the camera is. I can't see more than that. And we can't race. The tyres are more than okay
to race. The wet tyres do work. It's the visibility that's a problem. I don't think
there's an immediate solution. And I don't think anyone does. We tried the wheel covers,
but all the sprays coming from the floor. I hope next year, there's a lot less dependency
over the floor to produce the downforce. So the spray should get better. So there will
be a natural improvement next year. But yes, the spray, the spray is worse than it has been ever
before. Fingers crossed. Duck 144. How much was the bill with George after Monaco?
You really want to know? We had a couple of drinks. It was like 500 euros. So it wasn't cheap,
that's for sure. That race, how frustrating was that race? Was it almost comical by the end of
it that you're almost having to laugh or watch? It's weird. Mentally, you're in such an awkward
position because you've driven so slowly for so long. And you don't even know what's reality anymore.
Like you're daydreaming to a point of, this is dangerous kind of thing. And then you can push
now. And I was like, what's his pushing anymore? And so it is strange and it's not ideal. I again
can't tell you, hopefully these track changes take place next year, but it sucks. You think it's the
track then is the solution? Because obviously the two-stop didn't work. And you do a three-stop
thing. It's going the same way. I don't know if obviously the racing is important. I hope people
can just take the Saturday as the show, the Sundays. It's always amazing on the Saturday.
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We've spoken a lot about the importance of track position in 2025, Formula One.
Can you tell us track position is in? As in just always prioritizing being ahead of another
car. The question is sort of around strategy. Why do teams decide to go for a two-stop despite
you know when you're watching as a fan you go hey surely you want track position because it's
not as bad as Monaco but it's still pretty hard to overtake. Why would you go for a two overall one?
We had the same thing with Carlos just now in Hungary. He was
on for a one and he was dropping but he was dropping not at the point of
ever losing position but we still boxed and went for the two.
I couldn't get the positions but so to answer you it is complicated.
We have statistics of one lap passes and what's not a one lap pass so it might take you two or
three laps to get past and the odds are generally fairly stacked towards two for the most time.
The ones where it gets really complicated is DRS trains and the DRS trains totally blow everything
up because the dirty air wake is everywhere. There is no what we talk about finding clear air,
clean air to stay close to a car in front. It all kind of falls away. There's less of an
extreme and you can't find that clear air when you're on the fourth corner in the back of the
train and clearly the DRS effect is less. Maybe you could argue that what normally happens with
these harder compound tyres, you go along your stints, the tyres start to overheat, you start
dropping lap time and then at a point the treadway is off the tyre. The tyres cool down
and you go quick again and when that little spike happens and you get back on to a better lap time,
let's say the ones on the two-stop just halt basically but that increase in that time is a
little bit, you don't do a 35, 40 lap stint in every one so it's quite hard to know when it's
going to happen. So there's a bit of that going on as well. That's fascinating today.
Very different question this. Kay and I, have you ever laughed out loud while sitting in a car during
a race? Can you even have that kind of ability to find something? Wow, that just happened.
George cutting the corner. I wish I could but I don't. I think there are some drivers that
can. I think Max can. I've seen it at least on his radio. He's just so focused and so serious.
You just have to. Nothing can make me laugh. What would make you laugh? What racing condition
would make you laugh? Let's say someone's spun. I don't find that funny. No, I guess it's more
like a shocking laugh. Like we said, George is completely cutting a corner at Monaco and you're
like, what on earth is going on here? I guess it's more of a surprise. I expected it from George.
I love it. Right, we've got a few more questions. Very quickly we'll wrap up.
Which driver would you pick as your race engineer, Ergis Mathe asks?
That's a good question. Well, obviously I have to be technically sound. There's a lot of drivers that
just talk by feel, which is, he's absolutely engineered to decipher it. And that works.
There's a lot of rookies on the grid. Carlos. Yeah, no. That's because I think,
I don't think there's many drivers who, that sounds a bad thing to say. There's a lot of drivers who
drive and are very good at feedback, but there's some drivers who understand the feedback
and the science behind the feedback. And so I would put both of us in a similar window there.
And we talk about it. It's more of a conversation with your engineer, more than a
engineer, I need this kind of thing. Yeah, it's interesting because Ollie Berman said the
same that he was when we spoke to him. He was like, it's difficult. The most difficult thing is a rookie
is verbalising how you feel. And that's what the more experienced drivers have.
Yeah, exactly. That's a really good point from Ollie. I think the experience factor,
everyone can drive fast, but you can unlock more performance knowing
what you need to drive fast. Kind of what we were saying before about the max thing.
If you can understand that and understand the science behind it, and you can lean on
experience, for example, even in Hungary, we're just like, well, we remember
in Monaco when we did this and this and this with the car, and that helped that and this and that,
and that reminds you of two years ago when this happened and that happened, and then everything
just starts to gel. You can win and in the end of the day, the experienced driver,
if he's driving the car he wants for qualifying, the non-experienced driver has to then,
maybe if he's losing out, has to just adopt the setup of the other, the lead driver.
You can't drive that car as quick as the driver who's just made the setup for him.
Yeah, it doesn't work like that. Okay, we'll go for this. This last question from
Roxanne. If you could give Rookie Alex one piece of advice from 2025, Alex, what would it be?
I think relax into it. I think I didn't enjoy it that much for my Rookie years. Too much
external pressure and just felt like a little bit of a washing machine within the
circus, let's say. When you can take a step back and you can relax, you can then just soak it up
a bit more and focus on yourself a bit more. Yeah, really simple, but that's it really.
I think I still did a good job, but could have chilled out maybe would have aged a bit less.
Just chill out. I think that's fair because the tensing up, I guess, as a Rookie,
that's going to affect your performance as well. It is, and it's only natural for Rookie.
It's like you can see it with some of the Rookie's this year where it's just, it's emotional.
And I mean, you are there to survive. I mean, the Netflix have called it right. It is
right to survive. So when you've dreamed of it your whole life, then you want it so much.
You don't want it to go away. And so they can create that. There's that kind of like,
that's pure survival instinct going on in your head. And nowadays, when you
when you are a kid, you've done a year to year contract for most drivers, if they haven't come from
either sponsorship or family, you're surviving the whole time. But once you can get to the point
where you sign a multi-year contract, it's amazing how it can just be like, okay,
now we can focus on not just surviving and actually improving this. Yeah,
awesome stuff. All right. Well, thank you so much Alex for coming on the pod. Thank you.
It's been awesome to get some insight. Best of luck. Well, I guess for Zambol,
but best of luck for your summer break as well. Thank you. Thank you.
You go anywhere? Fun. I am leaving pretty much after this. So I'm going to go to Corsica.
We are your last thing. You're welcome.
Oh, lovely stuff. No, it was a pleasure to be here. No, it was great. It was great to
have you on. We could have done it in Corsica, but that sounds so much better to me.
That's who you are. Yeah. The temperature in this room is similar to Corsica.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm really sorry about that. We tried to cool it down and I'm so hot right now.
Thank you, Alex. Thank you very much. See you soon. Bye.
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