The Formula One future of Nyck de Vries is very much up in the air. Four races will take place across July. The scenario is that he must take a step forward in his own performance or he will be out of a seat after the Belgian Grand Prix at the end of next month.
This could open the door for Liam Lawson to finally get his F1 opportunity. Should De Vries lose his drive, the New Zealander is the man who will take it according to sources.
Lawson has had a very good junior career to this point. He finished P5 in the F3 Championship back in 2020, followed by P3 in the F2 series last year. The 21-year-old won four times in Formula 2 last year.
If it wasn’t for dirty and unfair driving from competitors in 2021, Lawson would have won the DTM championship as the rookie outshone more established drivers.
This year the Kiwi is currently over in Japan doing the Super Formula championship. He sits in P2 after five rounds, 12 points adrift of the leader.
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He’s also ran twice in F1 machinery last year. Lawson drove for AlphaTauri in Belgium, and the New Zealander also got a run in the RB18 in Abu Dhabi.
Tost spoke about Lawson during a written media session in Austria earlier on Friday.
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“Liam has done a good job when he was driving for us last year in Abu Dhabi [post-season test].
“And he is currently also doing a good job in Japan because it’s quite a tough championship over there.
“It’s a performance question. We have to find out.
“We have to see which driver is first of all available and matured enough and educated enough and ready to go to Formula 1.
“This we will see, currently nothing has been decided.”
Although not the number one choice for AlphaTauri, Daniel Ricciardo seems to be ahead in the pecking order of the Red Bull junior drivers in Formula 2.
Tost name-checked Ayumu Iwasa and Isack Hadjar as future drivers for the team but doesn’t believe they’re quite ready for F1 yet.
“The philosophy is quite clear: the performance decides.
“Of course, the philosophy is to educate young drivers. But if young drivers are not currently there… because there are some good young drivers coming – Iwasa is doing a good job, Hadjar is doing a good job.
“But it’s simply a little bit too early for them. I see them sooner or later in our team. But if the time is too late, maybe we find another solution.
“This has not been discussed so far. So far everything is like it is with our team.”
De Vries has had an incredibly difficult year so far in Formula One. While the AlphaTauri is a car that is quite possibly the slowest at the moment, errors and a lack of pace versus Yuki Tsunoda has left the former Formula 2 and Formula E champion on the brink. Tsunoda has scored two points to his zero, and he is 2-7 down in qualifying.
Tost once again stated it takes three years for a rookie to get up to speed because some of the venues outside Europe are not raced at in the junior categories.
Nonetheless, Helmut Marko is demanding much more from the Dutch driver in public and behind closed doors.
It wasn’t the most positive start to this critical few weeks in Austria today for De Vries, however, as he qualified last of all the runners for Sunday’s race, 0.190s slower than his Japanese stablemate.
“In Formula 1, every driver has pressure and we will see what Nyck is doing here and how Nyck is doing at Silverstone because he knows these tracks,” said Tost.
“Let’s not forget that rookie drivers nowadays are in a really difficult situation. If you look at the first part of the season, most of the racetracks, they don’t even know.
“They haven’t raced in Melbourne before, they haven’t raced in Saudi Arabia, in Miami. Baku, maybe. But in Baku we had the sprint race. That means the weekends are flying away.
“And for the rookie drivers, this is really very, very difficult.”
“Now at least, they come to race tracks which they know. This helps more.
“I always say that a driver needs three years minimum to understand this. And we will see now.
“I’m still positive that Nyck can do a good job. The rest, the results will show.”
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