Nyck De Vries is facing a critical month in his bid to remain on the grid after the Belgian Grand Prix at the end of July.
The Dutchman has struggled so far in his first full season in F1. In a car that is lacking fundamental pace, he has been unable to match his teammate.
Tsunoda has outscored De Vries 2-0 and leads the qualifying head-to-head 7-2.
De Vries admitted today that he’s still not reaching a level of performance that satisfies him.
“I mean, in all honesty, I’m probably not fully satisfied with my own performance yet.
“I think I should still continue to do better, but it’s equally a learning process and one weekend is different than the other and sometimes I’m better than the other.”
Pushed on when he would be happy with what he’s achieving, De Vries stated: “I think I’ll never be satisfied enough.”
The former Formula 2 and Formula E champion provided an example of his weekend in Barcelona where things looked promising but mistakes cost him.
De Vries spun twice in Q1 on a damp patch at turn 11 and destroyed two sets of his soft tyres. Although he got through to Q2 comfortably, he had no chance of getting through as he ran out of new tyres.
“Overall, I think I also need to put things a little bit better together. For example, in Barcelona, I felt like the competitiveness was really good, but when you lose two sets of tyres in Q1 in your P8, you go into Q2 without tyres and you find yourself a little bit on the back foot, and the start was a bit unfortunate.
“I think the pieces just need to come together. Hopefully with the updates, we will find a little bit more performance as a team and that will help us to get the pieces together and be close to a top ten.”
In qualifying on Friday at the Red Bull Ring, only 0.858s covered Verstappen who was fastest in Q1 and De Vries who was slowest.
De Vries pointed out just how tough it is to score points in modern Formula One.
“Of course everyone’s goal from P11 to P20 is to fight for points, but the reality is if you look at Red Bull Ring, the whole field is within a second. I don’t think that’s always appreciated enough because we just look at the classifications.
“But if you look at how close the field is, I don’t think that’s ever seen it all before.”
AlphaTauri will be bringing a new floor to Silverstone this weekend as they look to try and get themselves back in the midfield pack. The Faenza-based team sit last in the Constructors’ Championship on just 2 points. De Vries is hopeful for a step but doesn’t want to make any predictions.
“Yeah, we obviously really hope that the update is bringing us a little bit more performance. I think the past two weekends have been a little bit tough for us as a team.
“It’s always a bit of an unknown to predict and expect how that will work out on track, but hopefully we’ll find out soon and hopefully it will give us a little bit more to fight closer towards the top ten. But in all honesty, we don’t know at this stage.
“Yes, there’s definitely reason to hope that we will make a small step forward, but the magnitude is still unknown for us at this stage.”
Photo credit: Red Bull Content Pool
