Nyck de Vries has broken his silence following his sudden sacking from AlphaTauri part way through his debut season.
The axe swung on the Dutch Formula 2 and Formula E champion just 10 races into his maiden campaign to accommodate Daniel Ricciardo, who will make his Formula 1 comeback at this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix after almost eight months out of the sport.
De Vries has remained silent in the aftermath of his ruthless sacking but overnight posted a brief message to social media thanking fans for their support.
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“After recent events, I decided to take some time for myself away from social media, which I will continue to do,” he wrote on Instagram.
“I would like to thank Red Bull and Scuderia AlphaTauri for the opportunity to live my dream.
“Of course it hurts that the F1 chance I dreamt of for so long ended prematurely. But life is not a destination, it’s a journey, and sometimes you have to take the hard road to get where you want to be.
“I am grateful for our privileged lives, proud of our journey and my family. This is just another experience, we move on and look forward to the next chapter.
“Thank you to everyone for your kind and encouraging messages in the past week. It’s been heartwarming to feel your support.”
Though the decision to haul De Vries out of the cockpit came earlier than expected, the writing had been on the wall for several weeks.
The Dutchman started and finished ahead of teammate Yuki Tsunoda just twice and was on average almost half a second slower in qualifying.
The lack of pace combined with the absence of meaningful progress led his former chief backer, Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko, to rapidly lose faith in his decision to hand him the seat.
“It was becoming obviously a difficult situation for Nyck de Vries,” Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner explained to F1 Nation. “But there was a high expectation on him, because whilst inexperienced in Formula 1, he’s obviously a very experienced driver.
“There was a general feeling that Nyck wasn‘t quite hitting the mark.”
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Marko had earlier revealed that he and Horner had disagreed over whether De Vries deserved a seat in Formula 1.
The Austrian adviser had been impressed by the Dutchman’s stand-in performance for Alex Albon at last year’s Italian Grand Prix, where he scored points on debut.
But Horner was sceptical about his suitability for Formula 1, particularly in the AlphaTauri team, which is set up for young drivers with the potential for promotion to Red Bull Racing.
“I think that Nyck is a very capable driver and a Formula E champion and a Formula 2 champion,” Horner said. “But he‘s obviously got a lot of experience, he’s not a young driver as such from an age perspective, and I just didn’t see how it fitted within the junior program.
“It was always a stopgap.”
Horner revealed it took just 11 laps of Ricciardo’s tyre test at Silverstone last week to convince Marko to give up on De Vries.
“Helmut spoke with Nyck (to sack him),” Horner said. “He was the one that obviously had recruited him.
“He was the one that spoke with Nyck about at lap 11 of the test, I think.
“I think the situation was clear. It was a question of: okay, what‘s the point in waiting? If we’re going to do something, we may as well get on with it and give Daniel 12 races to see what he’s capable of.”