- The problem with just espresso is you drink your espresso,
you put your balaclava on, and then that's it.
You know, you've got your helmet on.
And all you're smelling is your coffee breath
when you're driving around, which is no fun.
[upbeat synth music]
Hi, I'm Formula 1 driver Alex Albon,
and these are my 10 essentials.
Anyone who knows me knows I lose everything.
I think that's because I'm,
a lot of the time so focused on the driving
that I honestly,
my mind just goes into a different place,
and the amount of times I've lost a wallet,
phone, passports, is on and on.
So Air Tags are my savior.
My Crocs, I mean, Crocs are cool now, right?
I've got basically my little Jibbitz,
and they're my travel shoes,
but they're actually quite embarrassing.
So sometimes when I travel with the other drivers,
I'll end up not wearing them.
They'll stay in the back.
They're quite simple.
If you want a bit of a backstory behind them.
23, it's my race number.
Sport mode, it's always engaged.
Peace sign.
I'm kind of known for a bit of a peace sign.
Lightning McQueen.
I have seen, they've got
Lightning McQueen Crocs out right now,
so I need to go and buy them.
These are so easy to use.
I mean like you can literally put them
in the washing machine, you can throw them around.
They smell good,
like the detergent sticks on the shoe.
So it's pretty nice.
So this is my Chipotle celebrity card.
Very excited.
I get free Chipotle, that's all I can say.
What did I do to deserve this?
I don't know.
I'm just very privileged.
I can eat this as much as I want, I think.
I'm not sure my trainer will agree,
but I think I can.
[hip hop beat]
Moving on to the third item,
these are kind of actually more my race kind of thing.
So my pit lane pass, this gets me into the circuit,
which is obviously very, very handy.
I do lose this a few times,
but this pretty much gets us anywhere.
It actually gets us also to race control.
So when we're being naughty
and we gotta go to the stewards,
and they gotta tell us off,
we have to use these cards to get into the buildings.
This photo was taken from 2019.
I was at a restaurant with my family.
They asked for a photo,
and I was late to respond to the email.
So they just took a photo from,
I think my mum gave them a photo and cropped everyone out.
So there you go.
Lovely.
And then this is kind of more serious, actually.
This is my notebook for racing.
So it's a little bit messy.
It's a bit a little bit worn down,
but it's really important to me.
It's where, anything I do about my racing,
so before every session, I have notes in here,
corner to corner basically,
telling me what I wanna be doing in terms of my driving
in terms of setup,
and just little check marks and pointers
for when I go out each session.
We also got loads of numbers, you know,
when we're driving around,
oil temperatures, tire temperatures,
when we wanna pit stop, there's a lot of things to remember.
And as I said, my memory's not very good
so I need to write these things down,
or else I'll forget.
A lot of this stuff is actually confidential,
because of all the numbers on there.
This is one, this is like a normal kind of test.
This is actually the first test of the year.
So this would be like what I wanna be doing
corner to corner, just little things,
which gets me into the zone and gets me ready.
And then I dunno what this paper is
but I think this was my waiver, this was Mexico,
so this was not Mexican circuit's fault
for me having a crash and dying.
[hip hop beat]
So I'd say these are my go-tos.
This is actual performance, now.
This is kind of what I call natural melatonin.
Again, traveling a lot.
Sometimes we are doing week on week traveling,
you know, jumping six, seven-hour time zones.
And I struggle with melatonin quite a lot.
I feel like my sleep doesn't feel like real sleep.
It's, I kind of wake up disorientated,
and don't feel very good going into the race week.
So this is a really good substitute.
It's just cherry extract.
If you drink too much of this, you'll need this.
And this is caffeine gum,
and I'll take this pretty much before every session.
So, well, it's a mental sport.
You need to be on top of your game.
Sometimes you might be, you know,
a little bit tired or sometimes you just need a routine.
And for me that's taking some caffeine
before I get into the car
and it just stimulates the brain and gets you focused.
A lot of drivers will use espresso,
or take an espresso,
which is fine, and sometimes I do as well.
But then there's also this gum.
If you want a really good hit,
you'll take espresso and this,
which is nice because then you don't get the coffee breath
when you're driving around.
Caffeine gum is the way forward.
[heavy synth beat]
This is my Oculus Rift.
It's something which I've got into since COVID, obviously,
when we're going to racetracks,
we're spending so much time in hotels,
and a lot of the circuits we're going to,
wherever it was,
we had, you know, one-day, two-day quarantine sometimes.
And in hotels, that can be pretty boring.
So I bought myself an Oculus Rift.
My girlfriend does to, she has one.
I think it's got competitive,
so there's some really good games out there.
But I was losing badly.
And so I adopted, I found this thing online,
which is like a golf grip attachment.
My game has changed ever since,
and I'm still losing, but I'm losing less.
And obviously with being
in a long distance relationship,
it's also actually quite nice to play games together.
[lo-fi music]
These are my kind of comfortable lounge wear.
So of course, you know, I've got some
Levi tracksuit bottoms, which are very cozy,
and I kind of travel with these everywhere I go.
And then this is my racing underwear.
So these are, these are great,
because I actually had appendicitis this year,
and I had to have a few, you know,
scars, and all that kind of thing.
To make it comfortable,
they don't have any kind of seams in them.
It's all pretty much one material.
So they're very comfortable,
and I got to wear them more and more
just because I found them the best thing to wear
whilst my scars were repairing.
It's been a big thing this year in Formula 1,
where underwear's become a big talking point.
I would wear previous years, my normal underwear,
and then my fireproofs over the top.
But apparently that's really bad for you.
The material that gets used,
you can get these burn marks in unwanted places.
I like my body parts secure when I'm driving around.
My girlfriend gives these to me
and tells me I need to put these on every day.
So this is gel cream,
this is SPF cream,
and that's all.
My skin is quite sensitive.
I have quite oily skin.
Also with the driving as well,
what's quite tricky is when you have your helmet on,
you're sweating so much.
You don't want kind of a thick cream,
and it starts to be uncomfortable when you're driving.
So the gel cream is quite good,
'cause it's quite lightweight.
My girlfriend just tells me all the time to wear it.
She claims I can get sun burnt, even indoors,
which, in a greenhouse, something like that?
So I'm wearing this all the time,
and if I'm not wearing it she will literally open the bottle
and just cover me in it.
So there.
[hip hop beat]
I guess this is gonna be a hard one to piece together.
Chilies, I love chili.
I love all kinds of chili.
I'm half Thai.
These aren't Thai chilies, funny enough,
these are Chinese chilies
from my girlfriend's family.
They make the most incredible Szechuan peppers.
I use this for everything.
I normally have eggs in the morning.
These go great with that.
And there's your basic iPad.
So I'm a massive iPad kid.
I love watching YouTube.
And pretty much that's my chill out, go-to thing.
So when I get back from a circuit, you'll see me watching,
if you guys know Mark Wiens?
He's like a YouTuber street food guy.
I'm a big foodie.
I love spicy foods.
So yeah, Mark Wiens is my hero.
[hip hop beat]
Going to the next item.
This is a passion of mine, photography.
All kinds really, this is a Polaroid.
I see these more and more now, especially in America.
A lot of people, fans will come up
with Polaroids instead of cameras, which is pretty cool.
And you sign them and give them back.
But yes, it's a bit of fun.
I normally take these with my girlfriend,
wherever I'm watching her compete,
or if she's watching me compete,
we'll take photos of each other.
And then just a normal film camera.
So I like my film photography.
I love the feeling of not knowing what you're gonna see
until you get the results.
We'll normally have a day to adjust to jet lag or whatever.
I mean, that's a perfect time to use a film camera
and just walk around.
Thank you for watching.
These have been my 10 essentials.