Albon: "When you have your helmet on, there’s no friendship"

During the period when the coronavirus could not be physically raced, many drivers looked up their computers to go and race there. Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, George Russell and Alexander Albon often met online to start racing and streamed it live for F1 fans. 

According to Albon, the streams helped him through the difficult period in which he was constantly sitting at home. “You could call it the Twitch quartet – Charles, George, Lando and myself. We’re all close, we all have our own relationships in between the four that we have", explains Albon at the F1 Nation podcast.

Friends helped by difficult period

“We have group chats and things like that. We talk about a lot of things. I’m probably closest with George, just because we spent so much time together”. The driver of Red Bull Racing. lets us know that there is a lot of respect for each other. “We all want each other to do well. We are the young generation, we all support each other.”

“Formula 1 is a big world, despite being as prepared as you can be, it’s still, in some respects, quite daunting. We’re there for support. They’ve been with me, it’s no secret that the press is hard, media is hard, and they’re always there”. Albon does think that these friendships are disappearing on the track. “You could almost say that there’s an unwritten rule that when you have your helmet on, there’s no friendship”, the Thai driver concludes.