Home F1 Podcast: Kvyat on his career, Marko, Ferrari/Red Bull, fellow rivals & more

Daniil Kvyat, F1 — Daniil Kvyat of Russia and Scuderia AlphaTauri prepares for a drive during the filming day in Misano, Italy on February 15, 2020 // Samo Vidic/Red Bull Content Pool // AP-234BSD94W2111 // Usage for editorial use only //

Podcast: Kvyat on his career, Marko, Ferrari/Red Bull, fellow rivals & more

08/05/2020

AlphaTauri’s Daniil Kvyat features on F1 Beyond The Grid podcast where he speaks on his career, Dr. Helmut Marko, Ferrari stint, fellow Red Bull drivers and more.

This week’s F1 Beyond The Grid has Kvyat speaking with Tom Clarkson via his home in Monaco, where he opens up on multiple topics related to his career and everything. Here’s the pointers from the whole podcast:

In keeping with the times, conversations began with chats about Kvyat’s whereabouts – Monaco, the stringency of the lockdown there, and he is doing to stay in shape.
The Russian driver told of his guitar-learning experiences of late, which have been sparked by him picking up the electric guitar; after this, he spoke about how much he misses racing, and what he’s been doing to whet his appetite – sim racing, primarily.
The 26-year-old then opened up on what it’s like to have been in F1 long enough to have started 100 Grand Prix, even if COVID-19 has prevented him from reaching that status.
This led to a discussion about how this experience has matured him as a driver and bettered him – shortly after, he answered another question from Clarkson about whether or not the Red Bull driver program sheltered him from the politics of F1.
From here, Kvyat told some more Marko stories, as he recalled certain stressful phone calls early in the career, and hypothesized whether this was specific to him or just one of Markos’s mannerisms.
Talking about the 2017 F1 season, in which he lost his ride at Toro Rosso for a number of races in the year, Kvyat spoke about their parting of ways, and what this was like from his perspective.
Sticking to chronological order, the next thing discussed was his year as a development driver at Ferrari in 2018, and how this enhanced his skills and made him a candidate for a drive at Toro Rosso in 2019 – he also provided insight into what exactly he did in that year away from a competitive job.
Talking about his experience testing the 2018 Ferrari at Fiorano, the now-AlphaTauri driver recounted the story of that day, and said that as he drove that car, he realized he needed to return to racing no matter the cost.
In what was a revealing conversation, Kvyat also added that Sebastian Vettel has an incredible work ethic, this being something that is often rumored.
Speaking about himself, Kvyat highlighted some areas in which he feels he has grown the most, and shortly after opening up on this, he once again hypothesized, this time about whether a return to Red Bull is on the cards.
Talking about Pierre Gasly, Kvyat spoke about his read of the Frenchman, his mindset, and his mettle. Continuing with talks about teammates, he opened up on what his time with Alexander Albon was like, and how he dealt with his promotion to Red Bull.
Discussing teammates of old, Kvyat talked about how quick Daniel Ricciardo was, and how he felt when he heard that he and Carlos Sainz had respectively left Red Bull of their own free will.
Looking back further in time, the AlphaTauri driver spoke of his beginnings in karting, and what curated his love of racing – he also talked about his move to Italy at a young age to help his career.
Talking about growing up with a life on the road, how he was educated throughout this, and what it was like all around. Somewhat unusually for an episode of the podcast, there was then a discussion about literature and some of Kvyat’s favorite reads.
Other hobbies he told of were boxing, training, and other physical activities. To wrap up the episode, there was an in-depth conversation about his three different podiums in the sport.