Red Bull reserve driver Alex Albon will be driving for Williams in the 2022 Formula 1 season after signing the contract with the team a few weeks ago. However, The 25-year-old Thai-British driver gives an account of how he would have missed the contract signage after misplacing his passport.
Red Bull dropped Alex Albon after the 2020 season, but the outfit decided to still retain him as test and reserve driver this year. This means Albon travels to race tracks and events under Red Bull. In one of the events Alex Albon was able to meet Red Bull senior management at a dinner and things turned hectic when he thought he had lost his passport there.
“I actually have a funny story about losing my passport,” Albon revealed.
“This year, I was doing an interview for Austrian TV. First time meeting a lot of the big guys at Red Bull Austria, who I’ve never actually met before.”
“For the first time I visited the main factory, and I went to one of the people’s houses to his apartment, took off my jacket, that kind of thing,” Albon continued.
“We had dinner, and I had to leave my hotel at 3am to catch this flight. I left my passport in my jacket, which I left at his house. I called him, called him, called him… Obviously I don’t really want to call someone that senior…”
The biggest trouble was that Albon was flying to sign the contract with Williams. However, he did not find the passport where he thought he left it but in the end he was fortunate enough to trace where it actually was.
“What makes this even funnier is this was the day I was signing my contract with Williams. I was like, ‘I have to be there’, like I can’t wait, or go to an embassy or anything like that, I really need to fly that day,” Albon added.
“But I called him and he didn’t pick up, obviously he was sleeping. So I was like, ‘What do I do?’. I remembered where his address was, got a taxi to go to his place, got to this apartment building and was buzzing the door, but he was still sleeping.
“Luckily, there was someone from the apartment walking into his building complex at like 3:30 in the morning at that point. So I go in behind them, and I’m just knocking on his door. His name’s Max , ‘Hey, Max, sorry I think I left my passport in your apartment’. And he’s like, ‘No, you didn’t leave your jacket here. You left it at the TV studio.”
“Then I had to go to the TV studio, and I was so lucky that there was a security guard there. He had all the keys to all the places and I could get my jacket, and I was on my way!”
