Franz Tost explains 'emotional decision' to replace Nyck de Vries

After a mere 10 races in his rookie season of Formula 1, Nyck De Vries was given the boot by AlphaTauri and their Red Bull advisors, including Helmut Marko. 

It’s been the story of the past couple of weeks, since it was announced Daniel Ricciardo would be replacing the Dutchman almost immediately after Silverstone’s tyre test, which Ricciardo impressed in for Red Bull. 

Ahead of this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix, the first in which Ricciardo takes De Vries’ seat, AlphaTauri Team Principal Franz Tost has discussed the decision to make the mid-season driver swap, which came as a shock to many before the summer break.

“This was also a very emotional decision because we have a really good relationship with Nyck - I just spoke with him on the telephone last week,” said Tost.

“He didn’t have an easy time with us. First of all, as a rookie, the first half of the season is not so easy because they are racing at many racetracks which they don’t know, like Melbourne, Miami, Saudi Arabia. Then they come to Baku where it’s a sprint race, which means it’s only FP1 then it’s already qualifying.”

Tost suggested De Vries was perhaps unprepared coming into this season of Formula 1, unlike another rookie in Oscar Piastri who has impressed thus far for McLaren: “Nowadays if a young driver comes to Formula 1, he really has to be prepared in the best possible way, which means for me at least five to six thousand kilometers of private testing with an old car, like Alpine did with Piastri - this is the way to go.”

A lot of pressure was built on De Vries after some disappointing performances over the course of his 10 races, in which he was unable to score a point. This is in contrast to his teammate Yuki Tsunoda, who has finished in the points twice and battled for the top 10 on several occasions this season. 

While Tost sympathised with De Vries in driving one of the slowest cars on the grid, ultimately the decision was made on both past and potential future showings: “Coming back 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.”

The Italian Red Bull sister team can now look to benefit from both the expertise of Daniel Ricciardo and the second half of their upgrades package, which didn’t go as planned when first introduced in Silverstone, as Tost looked ahead to Budapest: “Now with Ricciardo we have an experienced driver in there, which also helps us to develop the car, to find out better where the deficiencies are of the car and hopefully to improve the performance of the car.

“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 we made a step forward with these upgrades. “