How a harshly ejected Red Bull star has been hooked by racing again

Driver-turned-DJ Jaime Alguersuari lost his love for motorsport when he was booted out of Formula 1 just as he was starting to polish his rough edges. Having drifted from category to category then turned his back on racing altogether in 2015, he’s come full circle and is planning a return in karts for fun

James Newbold Apr 17, 2021, 9:38 AM

A decade has now passed since Jaime Alguersuari’s world came tumbling down when he was dropped by the Toro Rosso Formula 1 team. He was once F1’s youngest ever driver, the reigning British Formula 3 champion who was plucked from Formula Renault 3.5 midway through the 2009 season aged 19 years and 125 days. But he was ruthlessly axed from the Red Bull scheme aged just 21 after a 2011 season in which he’d outscored his more experienced team-mate Sebastien Buemi and showed signs of maturing into one of F1’s coming men.

After two years as a Pirelli F1 tester, a season of ADAC GT Masters and Formula E, Alguersuari called it a day in 2015 aged 25, inviting critics to crow that he’d had ‘too much too soon’, with little consideration given to the mental impact of having your dream career advanced and abruptly curtailed ahead of time.

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Author James Newbold

James Newbold is Autosport's Plus Editor, responsible for coordinating website feature content.

In a sign of things to come, having completed his Politics and International Relations degree at the University of East Anglia in 2015, he left his graduation ceremony early to catch the last train to Brussels for the following day's Spa 24 Hours.

After a period as a freelancer, he joined the Autosport staff in 2018 and won the Motorsport UK young journalist of the year award. He initially edited Autosport magazine's Performance and Engineering supplements before joining the website team in his current role in 2020.

A keen enthusiast of anything that can be categorised unusual or niche, he enjoys unearthing little-known stories across all branches of motorsport, but has spent most of his career covering sportscars and is a regular part of the Le Mans 24 Hours reporting team.

He lives with his wife and children in Plymouth, England.