‘No way to escape’ - Axed F1 star opens up on brutal sacking

Nyck De Vries has opened up about his brief stint in F1 before being brutally axed.

After scoring points on a last-minute dream debut for Williams at the 2022 Italian Grand Prix when Alex Albon was ruled out with appendicitis, De Vries earned a full-time drive with Red Bull’s sister team AlphaTaura for 2023 following Pierre Gasly’s decision to leave for Alpine.

The Dutchman endured a difficult start to life at AlphaTaura and was ultimately replaced by Red Bull reserve Daniel Ricciardo just 10 races into the season.

“I guess I didn’t really come up to speed quickly enough,” De Vries told the Cool Room podcast. “I think there were some situations where the coin could have easily [landed] in my favour, but it didn’t.

“Ultimately, let’s say 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.

“You pick up everything through the media. During F1 weekends you speak a lot to the media, so basically 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 – but that’s how it went or can go.”

2019 Formula 2 champion De Vries admitted he struggled to cope with the pressure amid relentless scrutiny in the media.

“You obviously have the media, so you have external kind of pressure, but you also have internal pressure, and every team deals with that differently. When you have both, it becomes basically a double up,” he explained.

“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, so 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.”

The 30-year-old, who went to become a champion in Formula E, said he was both “hurt” and “a little bit relieved” following his F1 departure.

“It was kind of painful to lose out on something that you’ve been dreaming of for so long, so quickly and prematurely,” he added. “I felt hurt, but equally, in a way, a little bit relieved.”

Helmut Marko described De Vries as his “biggest mistake” of his tenure as Red Bull’s motorsport advisor.