Photo by Peter Fox/Getty Images
A seat at AlphaTauri was not the only ride Nyck de Vries lost last year
Poor Nyck de Vries.
The rookie driver was unceremoniously sacked midway through the 2023 Formula 1 campaign, a move which brought Daniel Ricciardo back to the grid and served as yet another reminder that F1 teams — perhaps Red Bull in particular — do not have a lot of patience when it comes to a lack of performance.
However, apparently that was not the only time De Vries lost his seat a season ago.
The upcoming movie F1, starring Brad Pitt and produced in part by Lewis Hamilton, hits theaters in the summer of 2025. Producers are hoping that the movie, filmed at various races throughout the 2023 and 2024 F1 seasons, will do for the sport what the Netflix docuseries “Drive to Survive” did a few years ago, which is to introduce a whole new generation of fans to Formula 1. Over this past weekend ahead of the British Grand Prix the teaser trailer for the film was released, and Pitt and co-star Damson Idris were both on-site filming scenes for the feature.
That prompted many F1 fans to do some research, and on Monday those fans discovered that to build out the backstory for the film social media accounts were created for “APX-GP,” the fictional F1 team that Pitt and Idris drive for in F1.
Among the many messages shared by those accounts over the past calendar year? A goodbye message to De Vries, thanking him for driving for APX-GP:
Other accounts uncovered similar messages, such as this post that is another goodbye message to the driver ahead of his final race for APX-GP:
Or this message, congratulating De Vries on his tremendous P8 finish in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix:
Which, well, was his best finish last season, at least in the F1 world. But he apparently finished seventh in the São Paulo Grand Prix:
Still, it was not enough to keep his seat at AlphaTauri … wait we mean APX-GP.
Losing one F1 seat in a given season is tough, but losing two?
That just is not fair.
