F1: Jaime Alguersuari needed a 'head-shrink' after his time at Toro Rosso

(GMM) A former Red Bull driver in Formula 1 says he still has nightmares about Dr Helmut Marko.

Jaime Alguersuari was left disillusioned with motor racing altogether after he was dumped by the energy drink company’s F1 program.

The Spaniard, now 32, became a DJ after quitting motorsport at the age of 25.

“At Red Bull, you didn’t live in peace even with great results,” he told El Confidencial newspaper. “Your rivals congratulated more than the people on your own team.

“And we had that feeling from the age of 15. Nothing was ever enough. And if you look, it’s Max Verstappen’s pattern with his father. That is the Red Bull school.”

Alguersuari said he was so upset with Red Bull’s abandonment that he entered “a very complicated psychological and emotional moment”.

“I still have very strange dreams from that time when I sleep. I see Mr Marko always angry, beating me up as if I am a child. It created a trauma.

Grand Prix of Hungary 2009, Hungaroring. Image shows Jaime Alguersuari (ESP/ Scuderia Toro Rosso). Photo: Peter Fox/ Getty Images

“I have not been able to clean this up even with therapy and several psychologists. Sometimes I wake up crying – I’ve done a great lap and still see that Mr Marko is angry.

“I never saw him or spoke to him again. When I was a commentator with the BBC I greeted him in the paddock – nothing more than that.”

“I’ll tell you one thing: I still dream, when I sleep I have very strange dreams, very strange dreams of that whole time.“Especially of the impotence and frustration of never getting there, of seeing Mr. Marko always angry, telling me off. As if we were children. I see myself like that.

“This has created a trauma, and I am convinced that [Sebastien] Buemi and many others are going through it too. I have not been able to clean this.

“I have done therapies, and when I retired several psychologists helped me to deal with this to make a new life, but I wanted to deal with this to clean everything I had lived before.

“Now, even so, strange things come into my head. And sometimes I wake up like crying, when I’ve done a great lap, and I find Mr. Marko’s face and he’s angry.

“All this, since you are fifteen years old. Strange calls that hang up on you in a minute…”