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The Daniel Ricciardo news is the latest example that life in F1 can be cruel
It was a stunning debut at the Italian Grand Prix last year.
Pressed into action when Alex Albon suffered appendicitis on the Saturday ahead of the final practice session, Nyck de Vries slid into Albon’s FW44 for Williams and advanced to Q2 despite limited practice time. He qualified 13th for the Grand Prix — ahead of Williams’s other driver Nicholas Latifi — and due to penalties handed down to others on the grid, he started eighth.
The next day, De Vries finished ninth in the Grand Prix, scoring points in his first Formula 1 race. He was voted Driver of the Day by fans, and the promise he showed that afternoon at Monza was rewarded with a full-time seat at AlphaTauri for 2023 season.
After just ten races, and less than a calendar year later, De Vries is out. In a shock move, AlphaTauri and Red Bull announced on Monday that Daniel Ricciardo would be taking his seat with “immediate effect.” While the switch was not a complete surprise, given there were rumblings of a potential move coming following the summer break, the suddenness of it was.
And it illustrated a bitter truth about life in F1.
It can be pretty cruel.
The Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive, which is credited with introducing F1 to new fans across the globe, has that title for a reason. Like many sports, F1 is a “what have you done for me lately” exercise. With just 20 seats to work with, patience is at a premium.
Even for a driver of De Vries’ pedigree.
After all, we are talking about a driver who has won at every level before. De Vries scored his first series championship in 2014, when he won the Formula Renault 2.0 series by 130 points, scoring points in all but two races that season. He made the move to Formula Renault 3.5 the next year, and finished third in the standings.
De Vries made the move to Formula 2 in 2017, and finished seventh, fourth, and then won the Championship in the 2019 season, defeating Latifi — who would get an F1 seat before him — by 52 points. He also bested Zhou Guanyu (who finished seventh), Mick Schumacher, who finished 12th, and Nikita Mazepin, who finished 18th. Three more drivers who found an F1 seat before him.
His next stop was Formula E, and he won there too, securing a title in his second season in that series, back in 2020-2021. De Vries spent one more year in Formula E, finishing ninth in the standing in 2021-2022, before spending the bulk of 2022 as an F1 reserve. He had some practice sessions for Mercedes and Williams, as well as a test session for Alpine, and as noted above he made his debut at Monza.
When AlphaTauri announced that he would be getting a seat, replacing Pierre Gasly following his move to Alpine, there was excitement at the team. “Now, we are pleased to start a new chapter with Nyck, who’s very much welcome at Scuderia AlphaTauri. He is a very high skilled driver, as he won in all the categories he competed in, with many races and championships under his belt,” said Team Principal Franz Tost at the time. “His last big success was winning the Formula E World Championship, and this is clear evidence that he is a very competitive driver, who deserves a seat in F1. I am looking forward to seeing him in our car and I’m confident that with Yuki and Nyck we will have a very strong driver line up for 2023.”
That excitement lasted less than ten races, and despite that resume, AlphaTauri felt it better to move on, than to see if De Vries could right the ship.
Now, it is fair to note that some had reservations about De Vries — most notably, apparently, Christian Horner himself — and that he had been given prior warnings from Red Bull advisor Dr. Helmut Marko to improve his performance. There are also reasons beyond De Vries himself that the move was made: The team might be trying to get a better look at Yuki Tsunoda, they might be looking to put some pressure on Sergio Pérez, they might be taking another look at Ricciardo himself, or it could be a bit of all three.
But that too shows how cruel and fleeting life in F1 can be.
Just a few years ago it was George Russell who, like many F1 drivers, faced an uncertain future. During the 2020 season, the bulk of which he spent with Williams, Russell was struggling. Despite finishing in the points in a one-race stint with Mercedes, there were rumors that Williams would replace him with Pérez.
Russell found an ally in Esteban Ocon, who had gone through something similar at Force India at the end of the 2018 season. “I’m just reading the press, so I’m not really aware of what is happening, but I really hope that George can stay in Formula 1,” Ocon said in October of 2020.
“Performance-wise, he’s doing an excellent job in that Williams. He’s doing the best he can. There’s nothing to say bad about him, about what he is doing. It would be not justified for him to not be on the grid next year. But that’s how Formula 1 is. It can be cruel sometimes. I’ve paid the price at the end of 2018, and for 2019. I hope this won’t be the case for him.”
Williams, instead, stuck by Russell and were rewarded the following season. He finished 15th in the standings and scored in four different races, including his first podium in the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix. His reward for Williams’s patience? A seat alongside Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes.
But patience is rare, and Red Bull knows they have an opportunity at the moment to seize. They are the dominant team in the field, and everyone else is playing catch-up. They have the dominant driver in the field in Max Verstappen, and making sure they have the right teammate for him is a priority, given the fact that Pérez is only under contract through 2024. Everything they can do to determine who the right option is alongside Verstappen is worth doing.
De Vries had ten races to show that he could have been that option. Perhaps some more patience was deserved here, given his resume. But in a sport that rewards risk-taking and impulsiveness, patience is a rarity. Because while Russell’s story at Williams might be the exception, the flipside to his story is more common.
Because Russell would replace Valtteri Bottas at Mercedes, a driver who had spent five seasons with them and who had helped the team to five Constructors’ Championships. A driver who, during his time with Mercedes, won ten races, scored 58 podiums, and finished no worse than third in the Drivers’ standings each year.
Then, suddenly, he too was out.
F1 can be cruel, and De Vries is just the latest example.
