Two years on from his AlphaTauri days, and now competing in the FIA World Endurance Championship for Toyota and in Formula E for Mahindra, Nyck de Vries has spoken out about his time in the F1 paddock.
De Vries’ F1 stint began with an impressive debut at the 2022 Italian Grand Prix, where he stepped in for Alex Albon and scored 2 vital points for Williams.
This performance earned him a full-time seat at AlphaTauri (now RB) for the 2023 season, but the unfortunate series of events that followed led to his prompt departure from F1.
Failing to catch up with the rest of the grid
The Dutch driver has opened up about his experience driving for the junior Red Bull team, admitting on the Cool Room podcast, “I guess I didn’t really come up to speed quickly enough.”
De Vries had only 10 starts in the 2023 season before being axed for Daniel Ricciardo, noting that “there were some situations where the coin could have easily [landed] in my favour, but it didn’t.”
With a far from competitive car, he struggled to match the pace of teammate, Yuki Tsunoda, and his best result was a 12th-place finish in Monaco, miles away from the promise he showed at Monza in 2022.
“Ultimately, my bosses didn’t think it was good enough for the time I was there, and they decided to replace me.
“It was a challenging time because there were a lot of talks publicly about it, and I wasn’t really aware of anything. At least there wasn’t really much of a dialogue with me, personally.”
The decision to replace De Vries with Ricciardo after just 10 races was a harsh blow for the 28-year-old, “It was kind of painful to lose out on something you’ve been dreaming of for so long, so quickly and prematurely,” he reflected.
“I felt hurt, but equally, in a way, a little bit relieved.”
The “double pressure” of F1
De Vries’ struggles at AlphaTauri were exacerbated by what he described as a “double” pressure, with both external media scrutiny and internal expectations from the Red Bull family.
“You obviously have the media, so you have external pressure, but you also have internal pressure, and every team deals with that differently,” he explained.
“When you have both, it becomes basically a double up.”
The Dutchman revealed that speculation about his future began as early as his second race weekend in F1.
“Every weekend since maybe my second weekend, I’d just arrived and I had to answer questions about my future, which felt a little bit out of place,” de Vries said.
“Everywhere you are, you almost feel like they [the media] look at you and they, I wouldn’t say attack you, but you feel that they write and talk about it 24/7.
“When you are walking in the paddock, when you are moving within that ecosystem, everyone knows about it and you can’t hide from it.
“Even though you would like to, there is no way to escape. The way I tried to deal with it was just to ignore it and not to read anything – I just stopped reading any news. But you still kind of know it’s there.”
Not in Formula 1, but still a racing driver!
Despite his short tenure with the team, De Vries holds no bitterness toward Red Bull or AlphaTauri.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity that they gave me,” he said.
“I was able to fulfil my childhood dream. It didn’t work out, and it became a short chapter in my career.”
Since his F1 exit, De Vries has refocused his efforts on Formula E and endurance racing, “I consider myself lucky that I already spent time in Formula E and WEC.
“It made the transition back to those championships more straightforward.”
De Vries finished second in 2024’s 24 Hours of Le Mans with Toyota Gazoo Racing and came third in the World Endurance Championship standings, representing Mahindra Racing in FE.
Despite his chapter in F1 being brief, he claims that “sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward.”
“I would say I was very grateful that I had the chance to build a career before F1, because sometimes it happens that drivers are promoted to F1 and it ends quickly, or prematurely, and then they don’t really have anything to fall back to.”
