Red Bull is without a doubt one of the toughest teams with its drivers. For many years we have seen how the main advisor of Red Bull drivers, Helmut Marko, decides to change the drivers who are in his teams in the middle of the season (or even less). Let’s remember that Red Bull Racing competes as the top team in the highest category of motorsport, however, the energy drink brand also has a B-Team within Formula 1. We are talking about AlphaTauri.
The Italian team is designed so that the drivers from the Red Bull young driver academy are there, where they can carve out their path and gain experience in Formula 1. A very clear example of the objective of this strategy by the Austrian team is the two-time world champion, Max Verstappen. The Dutch driver joined the Red Bull Junior Team in 2014 and a year later was a starting driver for Toro Rosso (later it would change its name to the current AlphaTauri). In 2016 he was promoted to Red Bull and currently continues with the brand’s top team, the same place where he won his two drivers’ championships.
Until now, everything seems to be fine with the Red Bull Junior Team, however, the one in charge of making the changes to the driver line-ups is Helmut Marko, who is known for being extremely hard on the drivers.
In 2016, Red Bull announced that its starting drivers for the season would be Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat, however, and after a bad couple of weekends, Red Bull demoted the Russian driver to its B-Team after just four rounds, promoting Max Verstappen. Ultimately that has proven to be an inspired decision.
In 2009 the same thing happened but now with Sebastien Bourdais. A recent occasion where this also happened was with Pierre Gasly. The French driver was a starter at Red Bull for the 2019 season, but failing to get the right pace, Marko decided to demote him to Toro Rosso after 12 races with the Austrian-owned team.
Well, it has happened again but now with Nyck de Vries. The Dutch driver had a contract as the starting driver in AlphaTauri for the entire 2023 Formula 1 season. However, de Vries did not achieve good results behind the steering wheel of his AT04, so Red Bull decided to release him from his contract to bring back Daniel Ricciardo to the highest category of motorsport.
Photo Credit: Red Bull Content Pool.
It was not until today that he decided to take to social networks to express his feelings after being fired from AlphaTauri, denying any statement that has been published, since according to the Dutchman, he has not spoken with any media. False quotes had been attributed to him that all started on Twitter.
The Dutch driver announced that he will leave social networks for a while and thanked both AlphaTauri and Red Bull.
“I would like to thank Red Bull and Scuderia AlphaTauri for the opportunity to live my dream,” the Dutchman commented.
“Of course it hurts that the F1 chance I dreamed of for so long ended prematurely.
“But life is not a destination, it’s a journey, and sometimes you have to take the hard road to get where you want to be.”
“I am grateful for our privileged lives, proud of our journey and my family. This is just another experience, we move on and look forward to the next chapter,” the former AlphaTauri driver stated.
Besides this, the Formula E champion also thanked all his fans and the people who have been behind supporting him no matter what.
“Thank you to everyone for your kind and encouraging messages in the past week. It’s been heart-warming to feel your support.”
