Nyck de Vries is a Dutch racing driver who became Formula E champion with Mercedes during the 2020-21 season. He was signed to the McLaren F1 junior program in 2010 and remained with the papaya liveried F1 squad during his journey through the European junior racing series.
He won two regional single seater titles before graduating to GP3 in 2016 then on to the restructured FIA F2 racing series the following season. At his third attempt, De Vries joined a select few who had won both of the FIA international junior racing series with his F2 championship in 2019.
Yet unlike Charles Leclerc and George Russel who won both championships before him and Oscar Piastri together with Mick Schumacher who won them both in subsequent years, De Vries failed to make his way into Formula One and left the McLaren junior programme to race for Mercedes in Formula E.
De Vries tasked to lead AlphaTauri
Following his winning championship season in FE, Mercedes promoted De Vries to the role of reserve driver for their F1 team. Then came his big break at the Italian Grand Prix in 2022. Williams driver Alex Albon was taken ill on Saturday morning with appendicitis and the team made request to Toto Wolff to replace him with De Vries.
The Dutch driver was a revelation and out qualified his more experienced team mate, making it into the second part of qualifying, whilst Latifi again languished in the bottom five. De Vries executed his race well and came home in ninth place scoring a valuable two points for the team. Yet his F1 outing was to be a one hit wonder, as Larifi was released at the end of the year, but Logan Sargeant was brought in to replace him.
Yet Nyck had done enough to impress another F1 outfit who were looking to replace Pierre Gasly who was leaving for Alpine. Dr. Helmut Marko who runs the Red Bull driver academy, decided he could be the leader of the Alpha Tauri team, claiming his experience made him a more well rounded driver than his team mate Yuki Tsunoda.
The Dutch driver failed to dominate Tsunoda, although he acquitted himself on a par with the Japanese driver. Yet the high expectations place on De Vries saw him axed from the Red Bull sister team after just eleven race weekends of the 2023 season.
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McLaren run secret test for Dutch driver
It looked to all the world as this was the end of Nyck’s F1 dreams, as he returned to the WEC to complete for Toyota Gazoo Racing. He and his team mates Jose Maria Lopez & former F1 star Kamui Kobayashi went on to win the race in the premier Hypercacr class.
With five new full drivers joining Formula One there was little opportunity for de Vries to return to the grid followng his sacking from Alpha Tauri, yet today this all changes as an opportunity has opened up for him to return to his former McLaren outfit.
Following his departure from Alpha Tauri, De Vries completed a secret test with McLaren in a previous years F1 car and again joined Rio Hirakawa in another recent test at Paul Ricard.
According to McLaren CEO Zak Brown, the purpose was to evaluate De Vries long with other reserve drivers to settle on their lineup for 2025. Last year Gabriel Bortoleto, Pato O’Ward and Hirakawa were the test and reserve drivers for the team, yet McLaren have release Bortoleto him having agreed a deal with Kick Sauber.
Le Mans winner moves to Alpine
Now with the news breaking that Hirakawa – a Le Mans winner – is making a move to the Alpine F1 team, McLaren’s back up driver resources have been significantly depleted.This leaves only Indycar star, Pato O’Ward on the team’s roster and given a number of the Indycar race weekends clash with Formula One, its impossible for the Mexican to be available if required each weekend for McLaren F1.
On the De Vries test, Brown previously stated, ”It went very well. You know he obviously has a long history and he started his early career at McLaren. We are going through our TPC programme now, to evaluate a few drivers and Nyck is one of those drivers.”
When asked what in particular McLaren were looking to discover from the test, brown was candid. “That involves several things. Simulator drivers, test drivers, tyre tests. Unfortunately they won’t let me do it, so we had to look elsewhere and Nyck is obviously a great talent. So we wanted to get reacquainted with him and he did well. So we’ll see what happens.”
When asked when a decision would be made on the Dutch talent, Zak replied:‘Probably at the end of the year.’’ For McLaren to have a reserve driver of De Vries experience is an invaluable resource for the team given the role the drivers behind the scenes in F1 now are crucial during Grand Prix weekends.
The growth of the reserve driver roles
Reserve and simulator drivers have grown in importance in recent years given the an on in season testing of the current breed of F1 cars. Mick Schumacher performed this role for Mercedes in 2024 and was regularly praised by them boss and the drivers for his overnight work following the Friday practice sessions.
At times Mercedes were nowhere on Friday, then come final practice on Saturday morning, the hours in the simulator paid off as the W15 setup had been altered, and the car was in a happier place.
In Barcelona Hamilton was forthcoming with his praise for the young German simulator driver following a difficult day in Friday practice.
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“The car felt great [on Sunday],” said Hamilton. “Friday was a real struggle with the balance, it was way out of the window. It was very hard to drive, very unpredictable. And then we did some great work overnight.
“We’ve got a great team, with Mick back in the simulator on Friday night and he did some great work, which helped us get on the right track on Saturday. I think we did pretty decent work in trying to understand the different downforce levels.”
As yet McLaren have failed to make their ‘turn of the year’ announcement regarding De Vries, but their options are limited and with De Vries having 12 Grand Prix weekends under his belt, he would be the obvious choice should either Norris or Piastri fall sick, as happened with Alex Albon in 2022 and Carlos Sainz in 2023.
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