Nyck de Vries has had interest from Formula 1 despite his uninspiring debut season being cut short by Red Bull, and isn’t short of options elsewhere either, according to his manager.
De Vries was replaced by Daniel Ricciardo at AlphaTauri after a pointless opening half of the F1 season where he trailed teammate Yuki Tsunoda 2-8 in both qualifying and race head-to-heads.
However, the former Formula E and F2 champion is apparently well on his way to finding another seat in motorsport and his F1 career might not be over either.
“There is plenty of interest in Nyck“, De Vries’ manager Guillaume Le Goff said, as reported by Formule1.nl. “I have had quite a few calls in the past week.”
“Endurance, Le Mans, GTs, Formula E, also F1. We will see.”
Sudden exit
Aged 28 by the time he made his F1 debut, De Vries took the long road to reach F1 and is no stranger to the struggle to find a seat.
He was a McLaren junior for nine seasons but was axed just before he achieved the best success of his feeder series career – a dominant F2 title in 2019.
From there, he was signed for Mercedes and was a regular tester for the team in F1 while also joining up with fellow former junior star Stoffel Vandoorne in Formula E.
He struggled against Vandoorne in their first season together, finishing 11th in 2020 while the Belgian was runner-up thanks to a crucial win in the last ePrix of the season to pip Jean-Eric Vergne.
De Vries was back with a vengeance in 2021 though and took Mercedes‘ first title in the sport while Vandoorne languished down in ninth – evidence of the fickle nature of the series.
He’s also driven in the World Endurance Championship and has experience at Le Mans, making him one of the most well-rounded drivers out there.
De Vries finally forced his F1 shot thanks to a stunning weekend as Alex Albon‘s Williams stand-in at the 2022 Italian Grand Prix – having only been called up on the Saturday he immediately outqualifed teammate Nicholas Latifi before scoring points in the race.
But that ninth place is better than it ever got or De Vries in his first full-time season as he struggled against Tsunoda and could only manage a best finish of 12th all season.
Ricciardo finished 13th at the 2023 Hungarian GP, his first race as De Vries‘ replacement, and beating Tsunoda after also outqualifying him to reiterate Red Bull made the right decision to recall him.
Where is the next F1 2023 race?
With the F1 circus finished in Budapest, we move on to the 2023 Belgian Grand Prix which will be held at Spa-Francorchamps over the weekend of July 28-30.
