P1 with Matt and Tommy - Alex Albon on what it was really like being teammates with Max Verstappen

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

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/p1liveYou 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/mattp1tommyFollow us on socials! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube and TikTok. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everybody and welcome back. We are here with myself, Tommy and Alex Albon. Yes, again. I don't know which episode's going on. First, but I 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. Yeah, yeah. But it's your best season in Formula One or was it 2023. I think driving wise and consistently wise this year. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, 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 racing and we're, we've got a rank of four. This is the thing that is, I know they watch. Oh no.

It's real. This is the thing there. and we've asked a few F1 drivers this there. You have the best race of your life. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure it was users that said this. I think you finished 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, um, 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, what how much you've got out of it. There are weekends where I finished 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 it happens like that. Okay, if you just give us a heads on next time

and be like, guys, I know I finished 30. That was a 10 out of 10 bang. Then we're like 10. Hungry, that P20 quartering. Ooh. My daughter predicted you to win the race. I was gutted. Did you see that clip?

No. So 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, I was like, oh, last to 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 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 Red Bull 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 P1H, remember Crazy Casper 3112. How is 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. We've got better as teammates in terms. terms of understanding each other, but the communication has always been super open. And actually, I would say most teammates must probably go the other way. Once it gets competitive, they kind of close up. 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're, 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, we're disappointed with a P5, P6. So the more we can give back to the team and open the, speed up the development process, we will.

Because actually, we've signed relatively long contracts. We don't know. No point fight against each other now, is that? Speaking of teammates, It's obviously, you mentioned your teammates with Maxer Stappen. 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 mostly 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 how is he able to execute and be so consistent with a car that felt to me so so piquy? But yeah, I did learn. I learned his raw speed and I learned, it sounds a really weird thing to say, but why is the car that? he drives quick to drive. Like what, what is it about going in that set up direction?

Gets lap time. So 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, 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 that could carry through the Williams. And so we kind of pushed it more towards a bit more of an age-year car,

and we got more lap time out of it. And it still holds to this day. And even with Carlos, I think the friary is also not the easiest car to drive. And kind of when he first came in, it was like, okay, 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, 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 Penangujan. 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?

Huh. Why not? As long as Lego appears. I think that we just need to be more proactive in our cause, like, spa. If we see it's raining, I know we have support series and whatnot, but can we preempt these things a bit better? We were saying that it feels like quite 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 a gap in the radar, go, that's going to stop in 15 minutes,

get everybody ready to then go. Exactly. 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're 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're delayed for like, Exactly. I guess 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 it, 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 work. for it. We really can't see anything. And we've seen huge crashes and we've seen, you know, some of the worst crashes, life-ending crashes, where the visibility has been so bad. I can tell you there's been numerous races even this year where from from the back of this room to where the end of the room is, which is kind of where the camera is. I can't see more than that and and we can't race. The tires are more than okay to race. The wet tires do work. It's a visibular. It's a visible.

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 of 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 is worse than it has been ever before. Fingers crossed. Duck 1-44. How much? Which was the bill with George after Monaco? You really want to know?

We didn't... We had a couple of drinks. It's like 500 euros. So it wasn't... It wasn't cheap, that's for sure. Yeah. That race...

How, like, frustrating was that race? Was it almost like comical by the end of it, that you're almost having to, like, laugh or watch? it's weird like 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 you're daydreaming to a point of this is dangerous kind of thing and then the teacher okay you can push now and I was like oh what does push it where's what's his pushing anymore and so yeah it is strange and it's not ideal. I again,

can't tell you, hopefully these track changes take place next year, but sucks. You think it's the track then is the solution, because obviously the two-stop didn't work. Yes, exactly. And you do a three-stop and it's going the same way. I don't know. I don't know if, obviously the racing is important.

I hope people can just take the Saturday as the show. The Sunday is. It's always amazing on the Saturday. It is. It's the best Saturday of the year. So just enjoy Saturday. And if you want to sleep in on Sunday. We've spoken a lot about the importance of track position in 2025 Formula One.

Can you tell us? Track position as in... As in just always prioritising being ahead of another kind of. Yes, yes. And the question is sort of around strategy. So why do teams, like we've had hungry literally just now? Why do teams decide to go for a two-stop despite, you know, when you're watching as a fan, you go, he surely 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 um good question you're thinking the same on the cat position or deep yeah um well 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 uh I know you 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 we talk about finding clear air clean air to stay coast 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 the fourth car in a in the back of the train.

And clearly, you know, the D.R. effect is less. Yeah. And maybe you could argue that the, what normally happens with these harder compound tires, you go along your stints, the tires start to overheat. start dropping lap time and then at a point the tread wears off the tire the tire is cool down and you 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 halts basically but that that increase in that time is a little bit you don't do a 35 40-lap stint in every one so

so it's quite hard to know when it's going to happen. Yeah. 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 at Monaco. I wish. 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 heard it on his radio

Are you just so focused and so serious You just have to Yeah, you can't Nothing can make me laugh And what would make you laugh Like what In what racing condition Would make you laugh

Let's say if someone's spun I don't find that funny No I guess it's more like a shocking laugh Like we said Like George, you're 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 So yeah 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 Madhie asks? Oh, 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, it's absolutely engineered to decipher it. And that works. There's a lot of rookies on the grid.

Carlos. Yeah, no. And that's because I think, I don't think there's as 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 Olli Berman said the same that he was, when we spoke to him, he was like, it's difficult, the most difficult thing as a rookie is verbalising how you feel and that's what the more experienced drivers have. Exactly. It's a really good point for Molly. 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, you remember in Monaco when we did this and this and this with the car and that helped that and that 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 lead driver. You can't drive that car as quick as the driver who's just made the setup for him. It doesn't look like that, sir. Okay, we'll go for 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.

Like, I think I didn't enjoy it that much on my rookie years, too much external pressure. And it just felt like a little bit of a washing machine within the circus, let's say. So 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, yeah, 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 rookies.

Like you can see it with some of the rookies this year where it's just, it's, 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, so when you, 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, you know, 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 you know improving this so. 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 Zandvort, but best up for your summer break as well. Thank you. Thank you. You're going anywhere.

You're 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. We could have done it in Corsica, but... That sounds so much better to me. That's... Yeah. The temperature in this room is similar to Cossack. Yeah, yeah, really sorry about that.

We tried to cool it down, and I'm so hot right now. Thank you, Alex. Thank you very well. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye.