The signing of Nyck de Vries by AlphaTauri it was quite amazing. He had surprised all of Formula 1 scoring points in Monza with a Williams in the first race of his life in the ‘Great Circus’, but he signed for the subsidiary of Red Bull without being a young pilot or from his academy. In fact, he was a Mercedes driver.
Despite all this, Helmut Marko dared to offer him the position of replacement for Pierre Gasly, something that the Dutchman accepted. However, from the beginning there were many problems. The AlphaTauri is not a good car, there are the results, but De Vries was always at the back of the grid and the difference with his partner Tsunoda was wide.
A competitive tire test of Daniel Ricciardo it was enough to snatch the position in the Italian team from De Vries and, now, from Red Bull they have affirmed that it was a “provisional resource”.
Those are the words of Christian HornerRed Bull boss, on the ‘F1 nation’ podcast: “Nyck is a very capable driver, Formula E champion, Formula 2 champion… He has a lot of experience, but he is not a young driver. I didn’t see that I fit into the youth program, It was almost a stopgap“.
“There was a great expectation about him because, although he had no experience in Formula 1, he is a driver with a lot of experience. But after there was a general feeling that Nyck was missing the mark“, Horner sentenced regarding the reason for the dismissal.
Ricciardo, after a competitive test, has arrived to replace him. A signing that was made very quickly, the same day of the test: “Everything happened faster than we expected, taking into account that we had not completed the test. Helmut spoke to Nyck. He was the one who had recruited him and he was the one who spoke to him on lap 11 of the test I think.”
