‘There’s no way to escape’ – De Vries opens up on ‘double’ pressure he faced in F1 with early exit leaving him ‘hurt but relieved’

Nyck de Vries has spoken in-depth about his brief stint in Formula 1 with the then-named AlphaTauri team – the Dutchman making just 10 starts for Red Bull’s sister outfit during the 2023 season before being axed.

De Vries, a former F2 and Formula E champion, earned a seat at AlphaTauri (now Racing Bulls) after impressing as a last-minute substitute at the 2022 Italian Grand Prix, where he stepped in for the unwell Alex Albon at Williams and scored points.

However, his dream full-time opportunity quickly turned into a nightmare as he struggled to make an impression alongside more experienced F1 racer Yuki Tsunoda amid a backdrop of speculation and pressure from the media.

With less than half of the ’23 campaign completed, Red Bull bosses dropped De Vries to make space for Daniel Ricciardo’s return – meaning he spent only a few months in a paddock he had longed to make his home.

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“I guess I didn’t really come up to speed quickly enough,” De Vries told the Cool Room podcast when discussing his whirlwind F1 stint. “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.”

De Vries, who scored a best result of 12th with AlphaTauri at the Monaco Grand Prix, added that this intense media scrutiny and the already high expectations within the Red Bull camp made for a particularly demanding combination.

“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,” he commented. “When you have both, it becomes basically a double up.

de vries.jpg — De Vries started the 2023 season with AlphaTauri but soon came under pressure

“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.”

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Asked to look back on the moment he lost the drive, and his emotions afterward, De Vries reflected: “It was kind of painful to lose out on something that you’ve been dreaming of for so long, so quickly and prematurely. I felt hurt, but equally, in a way, a little bit relieved.”

However, De Vries also insisted that he has “no hard feelings towards anyone” following his F1 stint, with the 30-year-old now focused on achieving more success in the Formula E and endurance racing worlds.

Despite the obvious disappointment, De Vries holds no grudges over his F1 departure

“I’m grateful for the opportunity that they [Red Bull] have given me,” he made clear. “I was able to kind of fulfil my childhood dream. It didn’t work out, [and] it became a short chapter in my career.

“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.

“I consider myself lucky that I already spent time in Formula E and WEC, which made the transition back to those championships, I would say, more straightforward.”

De Vries finished second in last year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans with Toyota Gazoo Racing, as well as placing third in the World Endurance Championship standings, and currently represents Mahindra Racing in FE.