Alexander Albon would have to start thinking about competing in next year’s Tokyo Olympic Games to truly follow in the footsteps of the only other Thai to race in the Formula One (F1) world championship.
The 22-year-old Toro Rosso rookie, who makes his race debut in Australia next week as his country’s first F1 driver of the modern era, moves in a very different world to his late predecessor.
Prince Birabongse Bhanudej Bhanubandh, known simply as B. Bira, started 18 championship grands prix, including the first at Silverstone in 1950, and retired at the age of 40 in 1954 as one of the sport’s more colorful characters.
Photo: AFP
A British-educated member of the Siamese royal family, he also, from 1956 to 1972, competed in sailing at four Olympic Games — including Tokyo in 1964.
Abandoning plans to become a sculptor, he used his considerable wealth to race cars bearing a white mouse emblem and painted pale blue and yellow, which became the Thai racing colors.
He flew his own plane from London to Bangkok, had a string of marriages and affairs, and died in 1985 of a heart attack at Barons Court underground station in central London — a prosaic end to a remarkable life.
“He seemed a proper sportsman from what I understood. I’m not sure I could replicate that. I could give it a go,” Albon told reporters with a smile when asked what he knew about his illustrious predecessor.
“Motorsport is where I excel ... but I’m okay at drawing,” he added, hopefully.
Albon, British-born and educated with a Thai mother and English father, comes from a rather different background.
A Buddhist who attends a Thai temple in Wimbledon and has lucky charms tied around his wrist, he has come up through karting and junior series.
Father Nigel competed in the British Touring Car Championship and sports car races, while mother Kankamol made headlines in Britain when she was sentenced in 2012 to six years in jail for a multimillion-pound fraud involving luxury cars.
Albon is a good fit for Toro Rosso owners Red Bull, whose energy drink brand has its origins in Thailand, but that is largely incidental.
He did enough in pre-season testing to support the suspicion that he could be a surprise package.
Among the 20 drivers, Albon set the second-fastest lap in the first four-day test and was then sixth in the final week at Barcelona.
“I am more than optimistic that he will do a good job,” team boss Franz Tost said.
Albon, who won four races in Formula Two last year and finished third overall after missing out on the runner-up spot at the end, hoped so.
“I don’t see why I can’t try and surprise a few people. I think I do have that. People who don’t really know me and don’t know what I can do. Of course it gives me a bit of motivation to prove what I can do,” he said.
A world champion in the KF3 karting class in 2010, the Thai was also runner-up in the GP3 series to current Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc in 2016.
“That was kind of my very first year where I thought this is where I’m going to see what I’m really like, because Charles back then was also this up-and-coming superstar,” he said.
“To be able to mix with him gave me a lot of confidence,” he added.
Dropped by Red Bull following a difficult 2012 season, Albon returned to the fold when he was given the race seat in November last year after he had extricated himself from a deal to race for Nissan in the all-electric Formula E series.
“I had no feeling that when I did get dropped in 2012 that there was never a chance to come back,” Albon said. “I think that’s actually the drive, to prove to everyone that I do deserve it, and that I can try and prove myself for another chance in F1.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier