“Seeing Helmut Marko’s angry face” – Former Red Bull pupil reveals his traumatic F1 nightmares

Former Red Bull driver Jaime Alguersuari reveals that he still gets traumatic F1 nightmares from when he was a Toro Rosso driver.

Jaime Alguersuari is a former Red Bull pupil who raced with the junior team Toro Rosso(now known as AlphaTauri) between 2009-11.

The Spaniard became the youngest driver participating in an F1 race at the 2009 Hungarian GP. Max Verstappen later broke this record in 2015.

Alguersuari, now a DJ, told The Race that while he feels lucky and privileged to have had a Red Bull-backed career in F1, he still carries the trauma of the time he was seen as a Red Bull prospect.

He joined Toro Rosso in the 2009 mid-season, sitting next to Sebastien Buemi. He gave tough competition to his teammate in his two-and-a-half-year stint with the Red Bull junior team.

Jaime Alguersuari had an offer to join Lotus for 2012, however he rejected it, believing his chances at Toro Rosso are better. However STR dropped him and he ended up on the sidelines.#F1 #Formula1 #NotSoMuchRetroF1 pic.twitter.com/sonjmR2ZD8

— F1AlmostMovesandTransferRumours (@F1_AlmostMoves) September 21, 2022

Yet when Red Bull didn’t see both the drivers as the long-term option, they were sidelined for Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne instead in the junior team.

The Spaniard was often linked with a return to F1 as he got temporarily involved in Formula E, where he didn’t even last a full season after delivering an underwhelming performance.

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Alguersuari struggled to make peace with Red Bull

Speaking to The Race, Alguersuari revealed that when the Milton-Keynes-based team left him out, he struggled to make peace with it.

Even now, when he feels that he has changed, he still gets nightmares. “I tell you something – when I sleep, I still have very strange dreams of that time,” he said.

“Especially about the impotence and the frustration of never making it, of seeing Mr. [Helmut] Marko always angry, telling us off. As if we were children.

“This has created a trauma – and I am convinced that Buemi and many others are also going through it.”

The Spaniard revealed that he has been through therapy and still cannot erase this. He said that sometimes he wakes up crying after dreaming of doing a great lap only to get confronted by an angry Marko.

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