F1 folk: A journey from Alonso's kart mechanic to Verstappen's F1 tutor
In more than 20 years in Formula 1, Xevi Pujolar has worked with some of the finest drivers of this century, including race winners Juan Pablo Montoya, Ralf Schumacher, Mark Webber and Charles Leclerc. But he's also witnessed a few of the very best at the start of their careers, working with a 12-year-old Fernando Alonso in karting and introducing a 16-year-old Max Verstappen to the world of F1 as his first Toro Rosso race engineer. This is his story in his own words.
Adria, a very small track in northern Italy, just about a hundred kilometres from Faenza, and we are testing one of the old Toro Rosso cars, with the Ferrari engine, with a kid that Helmut Marko has been talking about since early summer: "There's this guy, Max Verstappen, who's doing his first year in single-seaters, let's do a test with him."
When I first heard about this idea, I said: "Huh, from a go-kart to F1?" You know, easy, Helmut, easy... But here we are, testing with a 16-year-old who hasn't even got his driving licence.
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