Thai-British racer Alex Albon has given further details about the dinner that was organised for Sebastian Vettel the night before his final Formula One race.
It was rumoured the dinner setback seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton $140,000 but such claims were rubbished by Albon.
The Williams driver further spoke about the current relationship among Formula One drivers as compared to the older generation of Formula One drivers.
Albon was told by the F1 Nation podcast crew that the grid today exhibits a level of “camaraderie and respect” that has never been witnessed before to which the Williams driver agreed.
“I agree,” he said. “I think the older guys talks about this… I don’t know how it was for you Damon [Hill] but there was a bit more of like enemies or rivals. [Today] it’s different. We’re still kind of friends.”
“Obviously, when you see the racing on the track, we’re not friends on the circuit. But at least off the track we spend so much time with each other.
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“We’re doing 23, 24 races now and I see, unfortunately my team-mate Nicky [Nicholas Latifi] or George or whoever more than I do Lily [Albon’s partner] and that’s just the way it is.
“You kind of build a friendship and I’ve raced against a lot of the drivers since I was eight, nine years old.”
“So I’ve spent a long time with them and yet, there’s also this thing where I think the drivers who have been in the sport for a while, Lewis, Valtteri [Bottas], Daniel [Ricciardo], they’re all super nice guys.”
“They make us feel very welcome and it makes everyone feels like a family and it’s really nice.
“That dinner, truthfully speaking, it was really special. It was a lot of fun. I think every driver, myself included, my cheeks were aching, just smiling and laughing the whole time. So it was really good.”
However, refusing to give confidential information about certain drivers, he did clarify rumours regarding the cost of the dinner.
“I feel I’d get in trouble, that was a strict policy of the dinner itself we can’t say what happened”, he did deny rumours the bill was 140 grand.
“We had a set menu,” he said. “There’s a lot of people with dietary requirements, like obviously Lewis is vegan and all that kind of thing,” said the 26-year-old.
“Lewis covered the bill, very nice of him. He organised it as well. Very nice of him. So he knows what the bill was.
“So that bill [the rumoured one], I saw that bill, that bill was from the Salt Bae guy, we didn’t even eat there. We ate in a place called Hakkasan.”
