De Vries dismissed by Marko: This was the Dutchman's season

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De Vries sacked by Marko at alphatauri season Dutchman
11 July 2023 at 18:49
Last update 11 July 2023 at 19:19
  • Sam Godber

The ball is in the court: Nyck de Vries has been sacked from AlphaTauri, his team has officially confirmed. As a result, the Dutchman will not get beyond ten races in his debut season in Formula 1. This was De Vries' season at AlphaTauri.

De Vries loses thickly to Tsunoda

In both qualifying and racing, De Vries was almost always beaten by his teammate Yuki Tsunoda. In the qualifying duels, the Dutchman lost the battle 8-2. De Vries ultimately failed to score a single point for AlphaTauri, while Tsunoda managed to score two points in the AT04. In terms of races, the battle between the two teammates ended in 9-1, also in favour of the Japanese.

In qualifying, De Vries had a very tough time against his teammate. The Dutchman was only twice faster than Tsunoda, in Miami and Spain. With the latter, things are a bit more nuanced. Here, the Japanese set a considerably faster time than De Vries in qualifying. However, Tsunoda's time was taken away because of exceeding the track limits, so De Vries won the duel in Spain after all. In Miami, De Vries was one tenth faster than his teammate on pure speed.

De Vries struggles in the race

In the races, things did not go much better. Whereas Tsunoda often fought for the last points positions, De Vries never got further than twelfth place. The Dutchman achieved this result in Monaco. De Vries eventually finished ahead of his teammate only once and that was also at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Australia was the first race where De Vries failed to finish. However, the Dutchman could do little about this himself: De Vries was hit from behind by Logan Sargeant and ended up in the gravel trap. The next race weekend in Baku was very tough for the AlphaTauri driver. Here, De Vries went into the wall twice: once in qualifying and once in the race.

In Miami too, the Dutchman made a costly mistake. After De Vries finally qualified ahead of Tsunoda once, the Dutchman went wrong right at the start. The 28-year-old driver braked too late for the first corner and crashed into the back of Lando Norris. In the end, De Vries crossed the finish line here in 18th place.

De Vries has a fight with Magnussen

De Vries often had an incident in the race and twice the Dutchman had a fight with Kevin Magnussen. In Canada, the two went off the track together after the Dutchman braked too late and in Austria, the two met again. Here, De Vries pushed the Dane into the gravel trap in Turn 6, for which the Dutchman was also penalised.

De Vries drives last race at Silverstone

On Tuesday, it was announced that De Vries drove his last F1 race at Silverstone (for now). At the British Grand Prix, the Dutchman crossed the line last, just under two seconds behind Tsunoda. De Vries reported after the race that he suffered damage to his AT04, which cost the Dutchman speed.