Nyck de Vries has finally been given a full time F1 race seat for 2023. He replaces the outgoing Pierre Gasly who joined the Red Bull junior programme some 9 years ago. Pierre was promoted to the senior team alongside Max Verstappen following Daniel Ricciardo’s departure in 2019, but survived just 12 races before being demoted back to Torro Rosso.
It appeared Gasly and Red Bull were happy to part company given the Frenchman’s prospects of ever driving in the top team again was finished when the team recruited Sergio Pérez following the departure of Alex Albon.
Red Bull Racing initially wanted to recruit IndyCar young gun Colton Herta though the FIA’s super license points system prevented the Californian from achieving his F1 dream next season.
FIA re4consider the super license points system
The FIA are considering increasing the points awarded for IndyCar drivers towards the super license given one of the toughest races in world motorsport – The Indy500 – is part of the North American racing series annual schedule.
De Vries was handed his opportunity in Monza when Alex Albon was admitted to hospital as an emergency patient for an appendectomy on the Saturday morning before practice 3.
The Dutch driver more than repaid the favour to Williams qualifying P9 and scoring 2 points during the race. He was ahead of established team mate Latifi in both sessions.
De Vries F1 future secure
Today Alpha tour announced De Vries will partner Yuki Tsunoda for the 2023 season. The ex-Formula 2 champion and Formula title winner with prove a challenge for Tsunoda who scored just 32 points in 2021 to his team mate’s 110.
This season too Tsunoda trails Gasly by 11 points to 23.
Nyck De Vries was obviously delighted to get a full F1 drive for 2023
“I’m extremely excited to be joining Scuderia AlphaTauri for 2023 and I want to thank both Red Bull and the team for giving me the opportunity to drive in F1. After Formula 2, I took a slightly different path with motorsport, but F1 has always been my dream and I’m grateful to be able to fulfil it.
“I’ve had a lot of chances to experience the 2022 car this year and I think that has put me in a great position for the upcoming season, I hope this has helped to prepare me for what is to come.
“Having spent most of my teenage years in Italy for karting, I’ve always felt at home there, so for me, it’s great to be joining an Italian team, that already has a real family feel, and I’m looking forward to meeting everyone and to start to build our relationship before the next season.”
Alpha Tauri boss delighted
Team boss franz Tost welcomed the young dutchman who rates his achievements in other championships to date.
“Now, we are pleased to start a new chapter with Nyck, who’s very much welcome at Scuderia AlphaTauri. He (de Vries) is a very highly skilled driver, as he won in all the categories he competed in, with many races and championships under his belt.
“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.”
It will be up to Tsunoda to raise his game next season. He is the only driver this year to receive 5 reprimands for poorly executed driving and received a10 place grid penalty accordingly.
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Max prevails in the closest qualifying of the season!
Just 0.010s was the margin @Max33Verstappen had over Leclerc in P2 🤯#JapaneseGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/pgVgRhT47H
— Formula 1 (@F1) October 8, 2022
Tsunoda is Japanese, his seat is safe with Honda engine on both Red Bull
All of the redundant engineers and staff that have been giving interviews this year have brought to light something unique in the hybrid era:
-teams can on!y build the car to suit one driver
-before the budget cap, only Mercedes and sometimes Ferrari could afford to have both drivers getting new parts. Some drivers bad contracts that said they always get preference, some teams favored one driver alone. This went the same for strategy during quali.
– your engineer was more important when it came to car set up. If your engineer was not as smart as the team mates, set up and mid lap adjustments would suffer and when 1st through 10th is separated by .6 of a second that is everything. Its shy Laura said these cars could be driven by monkeys.
So when it cones to tsunoda vs DV… It sill depend on the staff shake up next year. DV WA lucky that race. A lot of other teams misery gave him poings. He was just smart enough to not try to push too hard.
The new Dutch kid will bury Tsunoda. The last couple of weeks Tsunoda acted like a spoilt child, and Honda’s involvement will not be enough to ensure he stays in F1. Nobody will really miss him.