Former F1 driver Nyck de Vries has revealed the scale of the pressure he faced during his doomed F1 tenure.
Nyck De Vries signed for RB in 2023, scoring two points following a strong one-off appearance for Williams at Monza in 2022.
Expectations on Nyck de Vries were high, with the Dutchman expected to challenge for points against teammate Yuki Tsunoda regularly.
However, he struggled from the first race, and the pressure quickly piled on him, leading to a terminal performance spiral.
Failing to score a point in the first half of the season and enduring clumsy crashes, de Vries was dropped after 10 rounds.
Returning to Formula E, he has enjoyed success away from F1 and successfully rebuilt his career after his F1 failure.
Struggling to adapt
Speaking on the Cool Room podcast, de Vries acknowledged his struggles to adapt to full-time F1 and described his time with RB as ‘challenging.’
He also revealed he learned about the pressure he was beginning to face through the media, admitting this was “out of place.
“I guess I didn’t really come up to speed quickly enough, I think there were some situations where the coin could have easily [landed] in my favour, but it didn’t.
“Ultimately, let’s say my bosses didn’t think it was good enough for the time I was there, and they decided to replace me.
It was a challenging time because there were a lot of talks publicly about it, and I wasn’t really aware of anything. At least there wasn’t really much of a dialogue with me, personally.
“You pick up everything through the media. During F1 weekends you speak a lot to the media, so basically every weekend since maybe my second weekend, I’d just arrived and I had to answer questions about my future, which felt a little bit out of place – but that’s how it went or can go.”
‘You can’t hide’ from constant scrutiny
Expanding on the challenging situation that he found himself in, De Vries spoke of the internal and external pressures.
He also said the constant stories about him did have an impact, admitting he could not escape the situation. He stopped reading the news as a result.
“You obviously have the media, so you have external kind of pressure, but you also have internal pressure, and every team deals with that differently. When you have both, it becomes basically a double up.
“Everywhere you are, you almost feel like they [the media] look at you and they, I wouldn’t say attack you, but you feel that they write and talk about it 24/7, so when you are walking in the paddock, when you are moving within that ecosystem, everyone knows about it and you can’t hide from it.
“Even though you would like to, there is no way to escape. The way I tried to deal with it was just to ignore it and not to read anything – I just stopped reading any news. But you still kind of know it’s there.”
A painful experience leads to success
De Vries admitted that losing the seat he had worked his life for was ‘painful’. He then felt relief that the pressure had been lifted.
“It was kind of painful to lose out on something that you’ve been dreaming of for so long, so quickly and prematurely. I felt hurt, but equally, in a way, a little bit relieved.”
He confirmed he had “no hard feelings towards anyone” and that his future now lies in his Formula E and WEC exploits.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity that they [Red Bull] have given me. I was able to kind of fulfil my childhood dream. It didn’t work out, [and] it became a short chapter in my career.
“I would say I was very grateful that I had the chance to build a career before F1, because sometimes it happens that drivers are promoted to F1 and it ends quickly, or prematurely, and then they don’t really have anything to fall back to.
“I consider myself lucky that I already spent time in Formula E and WEC, which made the transition back to those championships, I would say, more straightforward.”
Feature Image Credit: Formula E Media Centre
