AlphaTauri’s rookie driver Nyck de Vries admittef he has made too many mistakes during the opening five rounds of the 2023 season.
The 28-year-old sits at the bottom of the championship standings, one of only two drivers to have not yet scored any points in the season so far alongside fellow rookie, Williams driver Logan Sargeant.While De Vries’ team mate Yuki Tsunoda has scored two top ten results and finished no lower than 11th in all five races so far, De Vries’ highest finish is 14th, which he achieved in the first two rounds in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
However, his season has been marred by incidents in recent rounds. He suffered front wing damage in Australia before being knocked out of the race by Sargeant at the final restart. He crashed out of both qualifying and the grand prix in Baku. During the last round in Miami, he ran into Lando Norris at the first corner, which compromised him for the remainder of the race, finishing in 18th.
“I definitely think that I personally made too many mistakes – I will admit that very openly,” De Vries told media including RaceFans in Monaco.
“I also believe that the pace has been strong at several moments and that kind of encourages me and gives me confidence. I haven’t been able to kind of execute at the end and haven’t been able to put it together, but I do believe that the speed has been kind of there. Equally, I made too many mistakes to turn that into a result, but that’s part of the learning process you go through. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. We are all human, we make mistakes and we move on.”
De Vries arrived in F2 as the 2019 Formula 2 champion and the 2021 Formula E world champion. He made his grand prix debut at last year’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza, stepping into Alexander Albon’s Williams after Albon suffered appendicitis, taking an impressive eighth place finish.
Asked by RaceFans if he was finding the transition to Formula 1 more dfficult than he had expected, De Vries admitted “you’re as good as your last race.”
“If you would have asked the same question after Monza, everyone would have had a very different perception,” he said. “Now I have had a bit of a more difficult start of the season and it becomes more relevant. I don’t really go in that much depth, it’s just I made some mistakes and that’s it.”
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Proesterchen (@proesterchen)
25th May 2023, 13:31
Mistakes only matter when you’re outside the fat middle of the bell curve, either too slow anyway or too quick and squandering your own and your team’s chances at more than the occasional podium finish.
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
25th May 2023, 13:38
Still to early in the season to get nasty with a total rookie.
I know he has done well in other formulas but still, give the guy at least half a season to fit in?
Marty
25th May 2023, 13:47
No we must bash him until Red Bull fires him like Albon and Gasly.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
26th May 2023, 5:01
I think 1 season even is fair to see if there’s any improvement, after all he’s in “toro rosso”, not red bull, they don’t desperately need points there, they just evaluate their drivers, and if he has it, there should be an improvement at some point this year.
Tim (@tsgoodchild)
25th May 2023, 15:09
I find it so unfair to judge a driver after just a handful of races, but also when you look at the tracks we have had so far. I felt the same way with Mick Schumacher last year in that the start of the season is a run of street circuits – where one mistake and you are in the barrier. Compared to the majority of the rest of the season we go to actual racetracks where a mistake means just a trip through a sausage kerb or bit of grass. Putting in a faultless weekend in Monaco whilst you are already under the microscope in not an easy task. Monza last year in a Williams seems a distant memory (on a comparatively much easier circuit).
Le Jimster (@lejimster82)
26th May 2023, 2:45
It’s too early to judge him, but at the same time we have to agree there was high expectations of him after that Monza performance in a Williams. The fact that Yuki is consistently outperforming him so far this year just makes it look worse. I would say for an experienced F1 driver, 6 races to get a decent understanding of the car is normal. For a rookie I would be expecting to see some improvement by the 2nd half of the year but let’s see if Red Bull show that level of patience.
Proesterchen (@proesterchen)
26th May 2023, 11:01
He’s 28. And slower than Yuki Tsunoda.
I think we’ve seen enough.
Mayrton
26th May 2023, 12:07
I agree it doesn’t look favourable. He is already a WDC in Formula E so the least he should have done is leave Yuki easily behind him. I’d like see him improve, but I have little faith. It took him way too long to get to F1 too. This might not be the racing category to compete in for him.