Nyck De Vries feels “ready” for his Formula 1 opportunity with AlphaTauri ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix.
At 28, the Dutchman is the oldest driver to start his first full season since Brendon Hartley in 2018. This after capturing F1’s attention with a brilliant P9 finish at last year’s Italian GP, having replaced Alex Albon at Williams from Practice 3.
Given his one race of experience then, De Vries isn’t sure if he qualifies as a “rookie”, though also doubts he has much of an advantage on the others…
“In terms of Formula 1 mileage, if you actually count it, I don’t think that I’m better prepared than other rookies,” he said. “I think both Oscar [Piastri] and Logan [Sargeant] have done more private testing.
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“But I think that’s almost irrelevant to me whether I am titled as a rookie or not – I’m very fortunate to be probably a little bit older and have had the opportunity to gather experience in different championships.
“Those different experiences have helped me develop myself and become a more complete racing driver. So I think I’m ready.”
De Vries is only the third non-Red Bull junior driver to join AlphaTauri/ Toro Rosso since 2006, and team boss Franz Tost praised the immediate impact his arrival had on the team.
“Always with a new driver coming if it’s a young driver coming from a feeder series, he brings in some input – some technical ideas,” he said.
“With Nyck, we were lucky that last year, he was in contact with many teams and many cars.
“I think that our engineers got good technical feedback from his side, especially after the Abu Dhabi test where he did a lot of laps, where he fortunately complained a lot about the car because this was a wake-up call for the engineers!
“It was so funny because the engineers wanted to argue that our solutions are good and I always say to them ‘look at where we are in the Constructors’ Championship (P9)!’
“I hope that we can provide him with a car that performs in the way he likes.”