How F1 star Alex Albon met Lily Muni via Drive to Survive and THAT Instagram DM

Albon, Lily muni, williams, girlfriend, 2024 — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 News & Gossip

How Alex Albon met Lily Muni via Drive to Survive and THAT Instagram DM

Alex Albon announced his engagement to partner Lily Muni He

Sheona Mountford F1 Journalist

Motorsport journalist working in F1 since 2024.

Saturday 17 January 2026 22:56 Updated: 23:20

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F1 star Alex Albon and Lily Muni He recently announced their engagement on Instagram – but do you know the story of how they first met?

The Williams driver and the LPGA pro-golfer shared their news with fans on Instagram, posting a polaroid selfie of their engagement, alongside the caption: "I guess we’re stuck with each other now."

So, how did the pair first meet? Their relationship timeline begins in 2019, where Muni reportedly first became interested in the Thai driver through Netflix docu-series Drive to Survive.

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Speaking to TS Media, she said: "He DM’d me first, very smoothly. But we were really just friends for the longest time.

"We really bonded over our sports or similarities that, you know, we see, we feel and all the struggles we were going through at the time. So we really bonded over that.”

Lily Muni on meeting Alex Albon

In a separate interview with Golf Week, she delved into their relationship more in depth, and explained: "We met because, this is going to sound extremely bizarre but it makes me feel like the world is so small after all, back in 2019 I was in a slump. I was in a really bad place mentally. It was my rookie year and I wasn’t playing well at all.

"A friend of mine convinced me to watch a documentary on Netflix called “Drive to Survive.” They said, ‘I think you’d really like it. It helps you to see another perspective of a sport that’s under so much pressure.’ So I watched the whole entire season in one day. I know as bizarre as this might sound, it got me really motivated in golf instantly.

"Naturally I wanted to learn more about the sport … I started following [Albon] and really didn’t think that much of it. He said he had a pretty small following. Well, by small he meant around 190,000 to 200,000. But he saw me, and he was really getting into golf at the same time I was getting into his sport. He was watching a lot of YouTube videos and golf on TV, so then he followed me. I guess that’s how we technically met.

"We started talking on the phone. We were both rookies in 2019 and I thought that was extremely cool. Eventually he had an event in the States and afterwards, he and his friend took a little break in LA and that’s how we properly met for the first time. I know it’s a long story, but everyone is always asking how in the world did you guys meet? Small world."

While their humour connects them now, Muni also admitted that she struggled to catch onto Albon's British humour initially.

Despite representing Thailand in F1, Albon is the son of English racing driver Nigel Albon and was raised in Suffolk, his mother Kankamol Albon hailing from Thailand.

"He's [Albon] a really funny person. I think when we first met, British humour is slightly different. It took me a while to catch on," Muni said.

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