Alex Albon Isn’t Afraid of Max Verstappen, Thinks he’s Got the Better of Him

Published 09/15/2019, 4:35 AM EDT

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Alexander Albon is enjoying his time at Red Bull and being Max Verstappen’s teammate. Recently, he reminisced about how he would beat Verstappen during their karting days.

The Thai driver has had a solid start to his Red Bull career, courtesy back-to-back top-six finishes in Belgium and Italy. It is worth noting that Verstappen has faced off against Albon prior to their single-seater careers.

However, it was a role reversal to their current situation, with Albon playing the star driver. Meanwhile, Max Verstappen took on the role of the inexperienced newcomer, but have the tables turned?

“You’d see this guy coming to the track with his dad,” Albon revealed in the ‘Beyond the Grid’ podcast.

“He’d be very quick, but he’d go home on Thursday because he wasn’t allowed to race. In 2010 it was my second year in KF3, the karting series.”

“I was the experienced one, the Red Bull-backed driver who had it all going for me in that sense, and Max was the young gun and we fought pretty much the whole year.

“We had some crashes, some fights, all good stuff though. He beat me to the WSK Championship, and then I won the World Championship, so you could say I got the better of him.”

Then, as the years passed, Max Verstappen got the call up to the big leagues before Albon got his big break. Now, in the 2019 season, Alex Albon has finally made it to Formula One and a familiar face was waiting for him, Max Verstappen.

Unfortunately, his karting rival was in the senior Red Bull team, while he was stuck in Toro Rosso. Later on, fortune would smile upon him as Red Bull swapped out the misfiring Pierre Gasly for Albon for the remainder of the season. Now, all that Alex Albon has to do is continue to prove himself alongside Verstappen.

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Written by:

Dhruv George

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Dhruv George is a senior Formula One and NASCAR analyst for EssentiallySports, having authored nearly 12000 articles spanning different sports like F1, NASCAR, Tennis, NFL, and eSports. He graduated with a PG Diploma in Journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications. Dhruv has also conducted interviews with F1 driver Pierre Gasly and Moto2 rider Tony Arbolino.
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