The Thai-British racer shares some of the best tips he received when he first started his Formula 1 career.
During his first season, Alex Albon shared the “best advice” he received from a former Formula 1 Team Principal.
The Williams racer progressed from the Formula 2 feeder series and made his Toro Rosso start in 2019.
The way he managed to salvage points from a subpar car gained him recognition early on, and Red Bull selected him to take Pierre Gasly’s spot in the senior squad halfway through the season due to the Frenchman’s subpar results.
Former Team Principal Franz Tost, who departed the squad at the end of 2023 after spending 18 years with the sibling Red Bull team, gave Albon some guidance while he was at Toro Rosso.
“The best piece of advice I got given, which was at the start of F1 career, was by a team boss called Franz Tost,” he said in an interview with the High Performance podcast.
“At the time the team was called Toro Rosso and he’s an elder man, but he’s gone through it. He’s been at it from the ground up. One of them ‘get your hands dirty’ kind of guys.
“He was talking to me about F1 when I was a rookie and he said ‘Alex, if there’s one thing you need to learn about F1, it’s to don’t give a fuck’
“It sounds so simple, it doesn’t sound that deep, but it’s so true. I didn’t really understand it until I went through the tough times. That’s when we talk about this putting yourself first and being selfish.”
Albon: At first, I was very worried
While at Red Bull, Albon found it difficult to equal teammate Max Verstappen despite receiving a swift promotion to a top position.
He thought that he “cared too much” at the start of his career about how he affected the squad, but Tost told him that he should concentrate on getting his own performance back on track.
“That’s when I really started to understand what he meant. Because at the time it was like ‘I don’t really give a fuck’ but actually, I do. I think I cared too much at the beginning,” said Albon.
“It was strange for a team boss to say that, because at the end of the day he wants you to care about the team, he wants you to care about the image of the team, but he wasn’t like that. He said ‘You put yourself first’ and then that’s it.”
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