The moving story of Albon and his red hair craze

Alexander Albon’s life changed radically at the end of the 2018 season when the man still known as Toro Rosso, currently AlphaTauri, called him up to join Faenza and become a Formula 1 driver.

His time at the sister team of Red Bull helped him to rise with those from Milton Keynes , but not reaching the minimum level that was required of him caused him to end up without a seat in the Great Circus.

With the opportunity that arose after George Russell’s move to Mercedes, the Anglo-Thai signed with the Williams team for the 2022 season, although still under the energy drink brand.

His performance at the Australian Grand Prix, completing almost the entire race on a set of hard tires and only stopping on the last lap to serve the mandatory stop, earned him his first point since Abu Dhabi 2020.

His state of form shows that he is a fit driver to be on the grid, and he repeated in Miami with a test in which he finished 9th, although what most caught the attention of his weekend was not his performance on the track, but his Red hair.

Albon appeared in the paddock of the new American track with his head dyed a very peculiar color, which has nothing to do with the dark blue tones, although increasingly black, of his single-seater, the FW44 .

The reason for this is very funny as well as curious, and it is that the Thai visited the Wat Sakeo orphanage in his country of origin, which houses more than 2,500 children, and in particular, two of them were protagonists for the proposal that made the Williams driver.

The little ones wore shirts from one of the most famous football clubs in the world, Liverpool FC , who have worn red shirts since 1894, when they changed because the city’s rival team, Everton FC , had the same blue.

The children asked Albon if he could dye the ‘Reds’ jersey in this tone, to which the Thai accepted without thinking. The driver said that he had made a bet with the members of the Grove team that if he managed to score points again, they would all have to wear their hair just like him, which he did.

However, it all comes from Volker Capito , the younger brother of Williams manager Jost, who has lived in Bangkok for more than two decades and was part of the team that won the Paris-Dakar truck race in 1985.

While Jost continued his successful motorsport career, the Dakar Rally piqued the curiosity of his relative, who moved to Thailand to run an event planning consultancy. Since 2004, Volker embarked on a personal project to help 2,500 underprivileged children living in the Wat Sakeo orphanage, something that has continued to the present day.

“I saw a huge need there,” Capito said. “I thought these kids might never have had ice cream before, so I tried to bring them 2,500 the next time I went, and it was a real challenge to do it without melting.”

“People wondered if I should have done better instead of buying all those ice creams, but when you see the kids start crying, it wasn’t a waste of money, it’s something every kid wants to have,” he said.

And so it became a tradition of the now called Iceman Charity (‘ The Charitable Iceman ‘, which made sure that all the mouths of that orphanage had something to eat after the devastating tsunami of 2004.

Albon learned about this story when he joined Williams, and because of his Thai roots, he didn’t hesitate for a second to travel when he got the chance: “Jost [Capito] told me about his brother’s charity, he showed me the things they were doing and it’s huge, I had to go see it.

“We took a day trip to go see the orphanage,” he told Motorsport.com. “What impressed me the most was how grateful they were for everything despite their past, some have had terrible childhoods.”

Red hair has become a fad in the Formula 1 paddock thanks to Alex Albon , who will name the organization’s sports hall in Thailand for his contribution and visibility.

“I’m not a very outgoing person, I’m quite shy and the public is not what I like to do the most,” said the pilot. “But I feel like there’s some responsibility to being able to do good, and there are a lot of good examples, just looking at my teammates, people like Lewis [Hamilton] or Sebastian [Vettel], they do amazing things for people outside of the sport.

“When the boys asked me to dye my hair, my first thought was that I was going to Melbourne in red, but it was a great way to put the spotlight on charity to donate. I feel very Thai, and I want to do more.” and more projects that can give opportunities to people, children, whoever in Thailand,” Albon explained.

“I feel like I’m in a good position to try to help. It’s an opportunity for me to do the right thing, we’ve been able to donate a lot of money and we’re not going to stop, we want to keep going,” Williams said.

Such has been the repercussion that this story has had that the mechanics of his garage, including the boss, Jost Capito , painted their hair red in the days leading up to the Spanish Grand Prix to continue supporting the cause and fulfilling the promise of the points in Australia.