Driver Deep Dive Alex Albon edition

The F1 Funcast is a podcast that aims to keep Formula 1 fun. In this episode, the host, James, talks about Alex Albon, a young driver for Williams Racing. James discusses Albon's background, his career in Formula 1 so far, and his performance in the 2023 season. Despite some ups and downs, Albon has shown potential and is impressing in his current role at Williams. The podcast also mentions upcoming episodes and previews the 2005 United States Grand Prix. Oh, I like this one. I like the sound of that. It's a nice intro, isn't it? That's funky. That's a little old-school 8-bit, maybe 16-bit Nintendo, but I think that sounds fun. And that's what we're all about here at the F1 FunCast, and welcome back. That's right. This is the F1 FunCast, the place where we are keeping F1 fun, and this is the Drivers' Deep Dive Series, episode number 1, 2, 3, 4, maybe 5, probably 4, but I have an exciting one today. I'm here to talk to you all about Williams Racing's young Mr. Alex Albon. He won the Twitter-Instagram poll this week, and I couldn't be more excited to be coming to you all with this information. It's just me today. Connor is absent with leave. He's got a busy life. We all have a busy life, and I know that a lot of you tune in to hear his expertise and his, how should we put it, his brand of knowledge. But as far as these deep dives go and these driver dives, this is just me. You're stuck with me, your host James here on the F1 FunCast. You can find us at Twitter, Instagram, Gmail, at F1 FunCast. We're looking for your podcast ideas, your suggestions, whatever it is you think that we should be talking about on here. We're about one week now from the Baku Azerbaijan Grand Prix, which is very exciting, and I'm looking forward to that. It's been a long time. I know you race fans have had a long time off waiting for this Grand Prix, but we're almost there. We'll get there together, and today I'm going to be talking to you about Alex Albon and this edition of the Driver Deep Dive. I can't wait. I say we should just get started, have a little fun, talk about a driver, and keep on trucking down that road to Baku. So thank you for joining me, and let's get underway. Alex Albon was born March 23, 1996, in London, England, and so that makes his birthday just about a month before the filming, filming, the recording of this episode, so I suppose it's just under a month. We can still say, you know what, happy birthday, Alex. We hope you had a nice birthday, and that would make you, I'm not good at these, but I believe 1996, you're 27 now, so outliving a lot of rock and roll and music legends that only got to 27, and so yeah, Alex was born London, England, and he's of Thai nationality, and he drives the number 23 car for the Williams Racing Team this year in 2023, and Alex is one of those guys that, again, and I'm finding this a lot, that it seems to be almost more you've got to be at the right place at the right time to find your F1 seat, because Alex seemed to have his window come and go at a pretty quick pace, and we'll get into that in a minute, but things could have gone very differently for Alex, I believe, and he could have found himself in a very different place in the racing world, but fortune has found him a seat on Williams, and so far, I mean, he's impressing in that Williams car in 2023, that's for sure. The Australian Grand Prix, which was the most recent one, he was running midfield, maybe even upper midfield, most of qualifying, and most of the Grand Prix, and it was a shame he crashed out about halfway, maybe a little over halfway through the Grand Prix, because he was looking for serious points for Williams, and probably a finish that could really shape the season for Williams Racing, so he's off to a flying start here in 2023, and things could change as the season progresses, but I do have to say, he's one of these, he's another one of this group of, who I consider to be the Pierre Gasly's, the Charles Leclerc's, the Lando Norris's, the, I don't want to forget anyone, maybe the Lance Stroll types, that are younger, and hungry, and kind of fun drivers that are on the upswing, and could be players for a while into the future, and again, you know, we could be wrong, in a year's time, we could be doing our Alex Alban We Hardly Knew Ye podcast, and I hope not, but there's a group of those drivers that really seem to be the upstarts and the upswing, and Alex is definitely a part of that group, I saw a great photo of him this week while doing my research, where he was, it was a picture of him, I believe it was Lance Stroll, George Russell, and, oh, there was another one, but they were maybe 10, 11 years old, in their karting days, jeez, I can't, who was it, it'll come to me, but, it's a great photo, these young kids that all now have F1 seats, and it's just so funny though, because Alex Alban, he stood about a foot taller than the next, I believe it was George Russell was the next tallest one in that photo, but it's just neat to see that these guys have all known each other, and been in the same circles for so long, and just how much bigger Alex was than the rest of those drivers, because I've come to learn that being an F1 driver, a lot of it does have to do with your proportions, and your weight, and your size, and he definitely in that photo seemed like, if you were a scout for a future Formula One team, he definitely looked like this kid might be too big, but he fits right into that Williams car, and, so let's talk about how he found his way to that Williams car. So a couple things right off the bat, I got a lot of this information from The Race, on their YouTube channel and website, those guys are great, check them out, if you're interested in more Formula One content, some good stuff there, and I should point out, we talked about it, but Alex was only the second driver of Thai descent to ever drive in Formula One, so I thought that was kind of a neat little something about Alex, but he was one of these drivers that had sky high potential, and found his way fairly quickly into Formula One, the same way, it seems, you know, we're not even going to go into it anymore, the same pedigree, the F2 championship is the doorway to Formula One, and his debut race was the 2019 Australian Grand Prix for Toro Rosso, which he was announced the year before, he was going to be driving for Toro Rosso, the Red Bull affiliated race team, and kind of rekindle a relationship with Red Bull Racing, that he had from the past, and midway through his first season at Red Bull, he got actually called up from Toro Rosso, up to the big boy team, up to Red Bull Racing proper, when Pierre Gasly was struggling with his seat, and his pace behind, in the big Red Bull seat, and so they called up, they called up Alex to fill the shoes, and he did pretty well there, his first half of, or he had one half a year of Formula One experience for Toro Rosso, and then he was able to quickly adapt up to the Red Bull car, at least for that first half of, half a year, where he was up at Red Bull, he finished in the top six in every race, except for the Brazilian Grand Prix in the second half of that year, and that's, and I think in that Grand Prix too, he may have crashed or been pushed out by Lewis Hamilton, so he may have been on pace for another top six finish, if I, if that's true, but, so he was really showing signs of brilliance, and Red Bull was feeling good about Alex heading into 2020, and, you know, thinking this could be the prospect to pair with Max, and they could push each other, and I think a lot of times in those situations, what happens is, and I think it happened here with Alex and Max, is the team, or the franchise, or whatever the situation may be, they try to get the best out of both of their drivers, or whatever, whoever they're evaluating, by pitting them together in hopes to push each other, and what I find often happens, and I believe happens with Alex Albon in this situation, is one person, one driver, will step up, and the other one will not step up with him, or her, and they tend to kind of suffer and take a step back because of that pressure, and I suppose, you know, that may be a strategy to get the best, to find, to find which one is your top dog, or it may be a consequence, because of the pressure, maybe you don't get the most out of your second driver there, or your second counterpart, which, you know, you could say, it could go either way, that sometimes maybe less, less pressure brings both people, or both performers up to a, to a level, or sometimes, you know, but that level won't peak as high as if you were to push one and let the other one sink, in a sink or swim situation, I suppose, but so that's kind of what happened in 2020 with Alex, he didn't have a great year driving for the Red Bull proper team, and kind of fell behind Max, and the qualifying piece was way off the number, and it was becoming apparent pretty early in 2020 that Max was going to be the guy at Red Bull, and Alex was probably headed, headed other ways, I mean he did, he scored his first pennant, his first podium that year, in Bahrain, finishing third, and he also, actually his first podium was in Italy, where he finished third, and he also finished third in Bahrain, but so what happened was, there's a chain of events where Sergio Perez was a free agent driver after 2020, because who was it now, that was a racing point at the time, they, they parted ways with Sergio, and Red Bull's looking for better performance than they were getting out of Alex Albon, so they signed Checo, and that forced Albon into a reserve driver role for 2021, I'm just sorry, I'm looking at my numbers here, there's a lot of numbers on this page, but yeah, 2021, or 2020, now I'm all over the place, yeah, yeah, no, I was right, 2021, reserve driver role, I just, I can't get it in my head that it's 2023, I keep thinking we're missing a year in there, so I apologize when I juggle these years, but 2021 reserve driver role for Red Bull, and at that point, it did seem like that could be the, the beginning of the end for, for Albon in his F1 career, because as we've talked about before, these windows open and close fairly quickly, and if you're not in the right place at the right time, I'm sure there are hundreds of drivers that were just as capable, but ended up not finding a seat in their time, because circumstances did not go their way, so it looked like that's where we were headed with Alex during the 2021 season, but then, yet again, one of those circumstances and the winds started to blow his way this time, with drivers shuffling between teams. This time, it was Mercedes making a move with parting ways with Valtteri Barras after the 2021 season, which then opened up a spot next to Lewis Hamilton, which we all know was filled by George Russell of Williams, thus opening a seat for Williams, and I have to believe when they took a look around and they saw this, you know, formerly sky-high prospect available just sitting down at the end of the paddock with Red Bull, they were probably, in my estimation, thrilled to, to sign Alex, and in 2022, he dominated his teammate, you know, the car from Williams last year, 2022, was not the strongest, but he certainly made the gap between himself and his teammate, Nicholas Latifi, so, so wide and so vast that Williams had to part ways with Latifi, and now we may be seeing one of those situations developing at Williams, where they're trying to see between Logan Sargent and Alex Albon if Albon can help pull Sargent ahead, and, um, kind of what was happening in Red Bull where Albon was the number two, and they were hoping that Max and Albon would grow together. It seems like Williams is having a similar, similar tact with Alex and Logan Sargent, but Logan definitely, or, I'm sorry, Alex definitely seems to once again be outperforming his Williams teammate, and, um, here's, let's just take a look at Alex's 2023, so after dominating Nicholas Latifi in 22, he, uh, they signed Logan Sargent, and, but this isn't the Logan Sargent podcast, this is the Alex Albon podcast, so that's why we're going to talk about Bahrain, Alex had a tough, tough qualifying, he did not finish qualifying, but finished the race P10, so starts the season off with a point for Williams, and I have to believe that felt good, I have to believe that felt nice for Williams to start the season, point on the board, Alex looking strong during the race, and I'm sure that was an optimistic time there in the Williams garage. Now Jeddah and Saudi Arabia offered kind of the inverse of that feeling for Alex and Williams with, um, Albon qualified P17 and then did not finish, and so then, you know, after one up, one down, he went to Australia, and I'll tell you, and you've heard, if you've listened before, he had a great weekend cooking down there in Australia, and he was flying through qualifying, and he qualified eighth, so he made it to Q3, I mean, in the Williams this year, a Q3, you know, the optimism must be palpable, and so that was the race with the three red flags and the, all the silly business and the, um, it's hard to gauge much off the finish of that race, but, so Alex did, uh, he crashed out about halfway through the race, but the Q8, or the P8 in qualifying, and the Q3, and Alex's performance thus far this year must have Williams feeling very good about their future with Alex, and they must, um, you know, it's going to be a long time before maybe those results start to get higher up in the finishes, before he starts to leapfrog some more teams, but from what I can tell, and I always talk about my limited knowledge, he seems to be someone who can, in the right circumstance, get the most out of his car, and that's what I think we've seen so far in 2023 with Alex, and hopefully more in the future, so once again, happy birthday a week ago, and if you're listening to this a long time in the future, wherever you are, you're probably laughing at that, but Alex Albarn found his way to Formula One, looks like he's here to stay, and he's getting the most out of that Williams, and, um, so thank you, thank you for joining me on this week's Driver Deep Dive, and, uh, this is the F1 Funcast, you can find me Twitter, Instagram, Gmail, I'm going to expand into more social media spaces as this develops into a more polished podcast, but look for a podcast this week coming out, Connor and I will be talking all about the 2005 United States Grand Prix, we're going to really dig into the details there and some of the behind the scenes and nitty gritty that, um, maybe, maybe you haven't heard before, maybe, uh, some stories that we can find out there that, uh, would surprise you, and looking forward to that, and looking forward to finally being in, uh, headed towards race week, and we will see you all, and talk to you all this week, talking all things 2005 United States Grand Prix, a Baku Grand Prix preview, and anything else that happens to come to mind here on the F1 Funcast, so thank you for joining me once again, and until next time, I, I'm going to get out of here.