Climbing mountains, Grosjean’s friendship and a ban from singing – Getting to know the real Ayao Komatsu

But you’d still give it a go? See what happens…

Absolutely! I love it. I love going karting, just for fun. But I’m not very fast – I’m just too erratic!

There’s a lot of travelling involved in F1, of course… What’s the worst travel experience you’ve ever had?

Thankfully I haven’t lost my passport… Not with F1, but once I completely mistook my flight time, and by the time I turned up at the airport, the flight had gone by 15 minutes. That wasn’t great!

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How many languages can you speak? And are there any others you would like to learn?

At the moment, English and Japanese, but I’m learning Italian. To be honest, I should be able to speak Italian by now! I’ve been working with Ferrari for 10 years, so I’m a bit embarrassed that I still can’t speak it, so I’m trying to learn it at the minute.

What would your karaoke song be?

No, no, no, that’s not a good thing! I cannot sing. I’m so out of tune. Even just whistling at home, my kids banned me from whistling, so it’s not a good thing…

Banned, did you say?

Yeah. I’m not allowed to whistle or sing, because I’m so out of tune, so I’ll stay away from karaoke!