Thailand has never hosted a Formula 1 race. So the driver who carries its flag spends every season a long way from home, and gets one weekend a year that comes close. Singapore joined the calendar in 2008, and since Malaysia dropped off after 2017 it has been the only regular round in Southeast Asia. Sepang came back this year as a one-off, standing in for Bahrain last weekend, but Singapore is the one that returns every year. From Bangkok it is a short flight south, and one hour ahead on the clock.
Alex Albon has called it “the closest race to home for me in Thailand,” and you can see what that means at the fences. Formula 1’s own feature on him calls him a bit of a hero in Singapore, with events drawing thousands of fans hoping to meet him. Not just to watch him race. To meet him. They bring flags and handmade signs, and they wait.
Some of them have been waiting for years, because Albon’s road here was anything but straight. He was born in London in March 1996 and races under the Thai flag because his mother is from Thailand. His father and uncle both raced, so he was in the paddock from about the time he could walk, and he came up through karting in England.
People noticed him early. In the build-up to the 2007 British Grand Prix, in Lewis Hamilton’s first season of Formula 1, McLaren and Vodafone put the ten best cadets from the Stars of Tomorrow series into 80cc karts at Daytona in Milton Keynes. Albon overtook more karts than anyone else that day, and Hamilton handed him the trophy himself. Twelve years later they would be racing each other.
Talent did not make the road straight, though. Red Bull took him into its junior programme in 2012, when he was sixteen, and let him go a year later.
He kept going anyway. By 2019 he was in Formula 1, and that summer his sixth place in the wet at Hockenheim took his points total past Prince Bira’s. Bira had been the only Thai driver in the sport before him, with 19 starts between 1950 and 1954 and eight points. It had taken almost seventy years for someone to go further. A year later at Mugello, Albon finished third and Thailand had its first Formula 1 podium. He added a second in Bahrain before the season was out.
- 1950Prince BiraPrince Bira becomes the first Thai driver in Formula 1, with 19 starts between 1950 and 1954 and eight points.
- 2012Albon · Red Bull juniorRed Bull signs Albon, aged 16, to its junior programme, then lets him go after a single season.
- 2019Albon · F1 debutAlbon makes his Formula 1 debut. Sixth in the wet at Hockenheim takes him past Bira’s career points.
- 2020Albon · Mugello, P3Albon finishes third at Mugello, the first Formula 1 podium for Thailand. He adds a second in Bahrain.
- 2022Albon · SingaporeAlbon races three weeks after a night in intensive care, in a helmet designed by the children of Wat Sakraeo.
- 2025Albon · SingaporeAlbon’s helmet, designed by Karlotta Freier, is auctioned for UNICEF Thailand.
- 2026Albon · WilliamsAlbon passes Nigel Mansell with his 96th start, a Williams record, and signs on for 2027.
That kind of thing travels. , the Bangkok driver who stepped up to Formula 2 this year, has named Albon as his racing hero, and that is usually how a motorsport culture begins. One kid sees someone from home do it and decides it is possible.
The people who run the sport are trying to widen that road too. Last week the FIA brought around 120 delegates from its member clubs across Asia and the Pacific to Boracay, in the Philippines, with grassroots competition and making motorsport easier to get into on the agenda. FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem called the region “central to the future of both mobility and motor sport.” Plans made in a conference room take years to reach a kid in a kart in Bangkok, though. Albon has found a quicker way to reach the people back home, and he keeps choosing Singapore to do it.
He showed it most clearly in 2022. Earlier that year he had visited the Wat Sakraeo Orphanage in Thailand, and the children there were given his Singapore helmet to design. They made it their own: light blue, a big smile on the front, an elephant on the side, and on the back two children with their arms around a driver in number 23.
Then, three weeks before the race, his season nearly stopped. He was diagnosed with appendicitis at Monza and missed the Italian Grand Prix, and after the surgery he suffered respiratory failure and spent a night in intensive care. He still made it to Marina Bay, not yet back to full strength, and raced in the helmet the children had painted.
The elephant on the side
The back, drawn by the children“I got to meet all the kids that designed my helmet.”
After the race the helmet went to auction for the orphanage, and with other donations the campaign raised about 97,500 euros. The money went into rebuilding the orphanage’s sports hall, which now carries his name: Alex Albon Hall. Something he wore for one weekend under the lights became a place for children to play.
It wasn’t a one-off. Three years later he brought another helmet to Singapore with the same idea behind it. The 2025 design, by Karlotta Freier, wove Thai and Asian motifs through the shell, and after the race it was auctioned for UNICEF Thailand, to fund education, child protection and mental health support for children across the country.
This year he comes to Singapore in a harder season. When Williams confirmed that he would stay for 2027, on a one-year extension, he was sixteenth in the standings on five points and the team was ninth. He had just passed Nigel Mansell for the most race starts in Williams history, his 96th coming in Barcelona. The points have been hard to find. The welcome at Marina Bay will not be.
It is a busier weekend than usual, too. Marina Bay hosts a sprint for the first time, the last one of the season, so there is a single hour of practice before the racing starts. For fans in Thailand everything lands an hour earlier: the Grand Prix starts at 8pm on Sunday in Singapore and 7pm in Bangkok. Our race preview, Back Under the Lights, has everything else you need to know about the weekend.
| Day | Session | Singapore | Bangkok | London | New York |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fri 9 Oct | Practice | 16:30 | 15:30 | 09:30 | 04:30 |
| Sprint qualifying | 20:30 | 19:30 | 13:30 | 08:30 | |
| Sat 10 Oct | Sprint | 17:00 | 16:00 | 10:00 | 05:00 |
| Qualifying | 21:00 | 20:00 | 14:00 | 09:00 | |
| Sun 11 Oct | Grand Prix | 20:00 | 19:00 | 13:00 | 08:00 |
Formula 1 can feel like a sport that happens somewhere else, to someone else. For fans it always does, and for Albon it mostly does. Then, for one weekend each year, the sport comes to Marina Bay. The lights come up over the water, and the people holding signs at the fence have travelled from across the island, from Bangkok, or from much further away to see him. On Sunday night he will pull out of the garage and race for Williams, the way he does every other weekend. Only this time, home is just the other side of the fence.
