22/07/2023
NEWS STORY
AlphaTauri boss, Franz Tost has opened up on the sacking of Nyck de Vries, just ten races into the season, the Austrian concerned at the lack of preparation available to rookies these days.
Already the subject of much speculation, the Dutchman's fate was sealed just 11 laps into Daniel Ricciardo's outing in the Red Bull RB19 at Silverstone as part of Pirelli's test programme.
"This was a very emotional decision, because we have a really good relationship with Nyck," said Tost, who, in the past, has shown himself to be every bit as ruthless as countryman Helmut Marko when it comes to firing drivers. "I just spoke with him on the telephone last week, and he didn't have an easy time with us."
Tost believes that a large part of the Dutch youngster's problem was, like many drivers coming into F1 these days, the lack of preparation, particularly in terms of testing and familiarising oneself with the machinery and tracks.
"First of all, as a rookie, and this is generally for rookies, also for the future, the first half of the season is not so easy because they are racing at many race tracks which they don't know, like Melbourne, Miami, Saudi Arabia. Then they come to Baku, where it's a Sprint race, that means it's only FP1 and then it's already the qualifying.
"That means, nowadays, if a young driver comes to Formula 1, he really has to be prepared in the best possible way, which for me means at least 5-6,000km of testing, private testing with an old car. Like Alpine did with Piastri, this is the way how to go.
"Coming back now to Nyck, it was difficult for him, also our car was not so competitive, and if a car is not so good, it's even more complicated.
"I expected a much better performance in Austria and in Silverstone because both of these tracks, Nyck knew quite well - but the performance didn't come up and we decided to change him.
"Also, thinking to the second half of the season where he doesn't know Singapore, Japan, Mexico, Austin and Qatar, which would not have made it quite easy.
"Now, with Ricciardo we have an experienced driver in there, which also helps us to develop the car, to find out better where are the deficiencies of the car and hopefully to improve the performance of the car."
Asked if de Vries' future, as far as F1 is concerned, lay in simulator work, Tost said: "I think Nyck will be looking for more than just to become a simulator driver, so he'll want to be doing racing.
"I've only spoken to him by text and he said he'll let me know how his plans are coming on. He was certainly very useful for us in that role and we'd be welcome to get him back in that role but I suspect that his focus will be on finding race seats. And if it's not in Formula 1, in some other big and competitive series.
"He's clearly very talented: F2 champion, Formula E champion, which is a very difficult series to win. And he'll be looking back to get into a winning seat again."
Asked about his hopes for this weekend, Tost admitted: "The hopes are that at least one car is in Q3 and the hopes are that these upgrades work as expected, as the aero group calculated in the wind tunnel and CFD.
"But you know, decisive is always the lap-time and I hope that we made a step forwards with these upgrades."
Check out our Saturday gallery from the Hungaroring here.