Having begun karting when he was just eight, Alex Albon once revealed how his love and obsession for racing began much earlier in his life. The Thai driver was a Michael Schumacher fan through and through, and his fandom was so severe that he would even start crying when the German driver failed to win a race. Albon made this revelation during an interview with the YouTube channel Korean Englishman a few months ago.
“I would literally cry for hours and hours if Michael Schumacher didn’t win. My parents couldn’t deal with me,” explained the Williams driver.
To deal with their hysterical son, Albon’s parents came up with a unique solution. They recorded races where Schumacher won, and they would play it to distract him. Once Schumacher won the race, Albon would jump joyously.
However, this wasn’t the only example of Albon’s obsession with racing. During another podcast interview with High Performance, Albon detailed how Ferrari also carries a special place in his heart. Albon revealed that ‘Ferrari’ was one of the first words he learned, and he used to pronounce it as “Rari.”
Alex Albon got the racing bug through his father
Speaking further about how the racing bug bit him, Alex Albon revealed his father was also a racing enthusiast and loved racing whenever he got the time for it. According to Albon, his father was a “Semi-Professional” driver. However, the 27-year-old never got the chance to see his father live in action as his dad stopped racing right before he developed a liking for it.
Albon once even posted a baby picture of himself dressed up in Ferrari overalls and captioned himself as a huge Michael Schumacher fan, who was a driver of the Italian outfit at the time. Albon further mentioned he only loved Ferrari because Red Bull wasn’t on the grid yet. Once the energy drink brand made its way onto the grid, Albon found his entry ticket into the F1 realm, but it ended up being a disaster.
