AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda reckons his former team mate Nyck de Vries “had the pace” to be in Formula 1 and said he “learned from him” during their 10 grands prix together.
De Vries lost his seat following the British Grand Prix two weeks ago, and has been replaced by Daniel Ricciardo – who raced for AlphaTauri a decade ago when it was known as Toro Rosso – for the rest of the season.“I’m looking forward to working with Daniel. I can’t say I know him very well, but we had a fun day filming together earlier this year in Miami,” said Tsunoda.
De Vries had only made a single F1 start before joining AlphaTauri this year. Ricciardo is an eight-times grand prix winner with over 200 starts to his name.
“I think I’ll benefit from having a very good, experienced driver as a team mate,” Tsunoda continued. “I’m sure I can learn lots of things from him and I also expect he will be able to bring something to the team and move the car development forward.”
AlphaTauri has slipped from eighth to tenth in the constructors’ standings over the course of this season. Their most recent points finish came seven races ago.
Despite de Vries losing his place at the team before the season reached its halfway mark, Tsunoda said he played an important role in the team’s performance.
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“I had an enjoyable time over the past ten races with Nyck. I learned from him, and we also had a good time away from the track.
“He had plenty of experience in other categories and gave the team good feedback based on his knowledge. He had the pace and, as a friend, I enjoyed my time with him.”
The team hopes to lift itself from the bottom of the points standings after bringing the latest in a series of new parts for the AT04.
“For this weekend, we have more upgrades for the race in Hungary, on top of those we brought to the last race,” said Tsunoda. “Budapest has completely different track characteristics compared to the past two races, and its slow-speed corners should suit our car better than the high-speed ones.”
“As a team, we’re very motivated to go forward and develop the car as much as possible. In my mind, I’ve had a complete reset from the last few races, especially Silverstone, and I’m in a positive frame of mind.”
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2023 Hungarian Grand Prix
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- Why Ricciardo says McLaren’s car “speaks Lando’s language” – but Norris disagrees
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MacLeod (@macleod)
19th July 2023, 13:55
As the rumours were Mick seems to be knowledgeable improving the car but that are we going to see much later. Strang that Yuki said Nyck had the pace while we saw him mostly behind Yuki…. anyone knows what he means with this?
Michael
19th July 2023, 18:00
Tsunoda probably thinks de Vries was roughly the second fastest driver in the world…
MichaelN
19th July 2023, 19:14
Considering De Vries is the only F1 driver Tsunoda has been (marginally) faster than, that could be a reason to make such a claim.
Alonso does this all the time, and at this point it has to be some sort of deliberate joke. If you only look at his statements, you’d think he was constantly paired with timeless legends of the sport that he somehow always manages to beat. It’s rather amusing, if not necessarily true.
SteveP
19th July 2023, 19:16
What it says – de Vries had the driving skill to get an F1 car halfway to the front of the grid. Marko said as much. All F1 fans saw the race last year.
That does of course assume that the item he’s given qualifies as a current regulations F1 car.
As I said elsewhere, it will be interesting to see how DR copes with the assemblage of wheels and carbon fibre that is labelled AlphaTauri. Feedback doesn’t seem to be his strong suit – comments from McLaren were to the effect that he had told them the car wasn’t right, but couldn’t say how it didn’t feel right.
In contrast, Tost reported that from the first couple of laps, de Vries was reporting items that needed looking at and pretty much knocked the design team back on their heels with precise descriptions of faults and descriptions of how it should behave
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
19th July 2023, 19:55
Ah, yes, I remember he said something about the issues with the car, I actually thought he would’ve beaten tsunoda though: great drivers can adapt to a bad car, look how alonso destroyed raikkonen with a horrible ferrari in 2014.
Tristan (@skipgamer)
20th July 2023, 0:05
I wouldn’t be listening to McLaren’s comments re: Dan, he told them from day 1 and they told him to go back to school and learn to drive.
He was quite vocal about not having any traction in low speed for the first year. The answer was always Norris can make it work so why can’t you.
For sure he’s not a technical expert that some drivers are, but he was able to get the Renault to work through trial and error in setup. McLaren just wouldn’t allow him to do that…
Tristan (@skipgamer)
20th July 2023, 0:11
Thinking back, and looking now at how Piastri is going. It’s not so much that Dan didn’t give McLaren feedback, it’s just not the feedback the team wanted to hear.
Norris said they were never on the same page with feedback but he is with Piastri. That doesn’t really fit the supposed narrative that Dan couldn’t provide feedback. It’s not hard to imagine that Norris was asking for more speed while Ricciardo wanted the handling sorted.
Hendy (@hendy)
19th July 2023, 23:04
This current generation of cars takes drivers a long time to get to grips with. They have basically no testing at all and become reacquainted with the car each weekend. Drivers that switch teams/cars seem to really take a long time to get on top of their teammates.
de Vries would have been on pace with Yuki by season’s end. He should be trying to get a top ride in Indycar where he can show his talent — he has one of the best racing resumes I’ve ever seen (and with no budget). His karting resume is ridiculous.
Jackson
19th July 2023, 23:45
Oscar seems to be doing a good job of it
Tristan (@skipgamer)
20th July 2023, 0:16
It’s quite simple really, it’s not the fault of De Vries that he’s out. Just a victim of circumstance. Dan is worth so much with what he brings to the team, and F1 in terms of marketing.
There’s no question that Red Bull will get more out of him on the grid rather than simulator and events, than they ever will get out of De Vries.
For sure De Vries should have been given more time in F1, but F1 has never been about what’s fair. Everything has a business/political case behind it.