F1 SILLY SEASON in full swing as Red Bull start chaotic period

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F1 SILLY SEASON in full swing as Red Bull start chaotic period

Daniel Ricciardo moved to AlphaTauri to replace Nyck de Vries this week

Jim Kimberley

Thursday 13 July 2023 13:27

The Red Bull Racing wheel of impatience has turned again, this time with Nyck de Vries as the driver sent packing and facing an uncertain future.

Rumours circulated for months that Red Bull's upper management didn't find the Dutch driver's performances as satisfactory as they had hoped, and yet the suddenness of the announcement still made the inevitable come as a surprise.

Ricciardo in the hot seat

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Daniel Ricciardo will be the man to step into De Vries' seat, though what Red Bull expect the Honey Badger to do with an AlphaTauri approximately as potent as a wet paper towel is beyond me.

A driver famed for late-braking manoeuvres and opportunistic overtakes struggled to adapt to Renault's R.S. 19's slow braking after five years with Adrian Newey-designed aero, and he left little impression driving McLaren's midfield challengers, either.

Joining a squad that exists to prime possible Red Bull candidates for a seat at the high table is such a step down for someone with 232 race starts, so it's no wonder I think there are more mechanisms in place than just pushing De Vries aside.

The Rude Goldberg machine of interconnecting dots between Red Bull, AlphaTauri, and the Red Bull Junior Team that has drivers in Formula 2, Formula 3, Super Formula and beyond is going to make 2023's silly season have an offshoot that'll require a PhD to comprehend.

Sergio Perez getting replaced by Daniel Ricciardo, who steps aside for Liam Lawson, while Ayumu Iwasa and Dennis Hauger head to Japan for a year as Yuki Tsunoda hides in a corner. It's all possible now that the first domino has fallen.

De Vries Dumped

But let's take a moment to feel for the fallen amid all the excitement about what comes next because a person whose dream has just shattered is at the heart of all the drama.

De Vries might not have set the world on fire in his 10 F1 races, especially with the hype surrounding him after his Monza cameo last year, but this is the weakest AlphaTauri/Toro Rosso have looked for years – what was he expected to do?

Earlier this year, AlphaTauri Team Principal Franz Tost stated drivers need three years in F1 to prove themselves, and yet, somehow, half a season was enough for the powers that be to decide De Vries isn't up to scratch.

He might have the Formula E championship to his name, but he was still a Formula 1 rookie in 2023, the same as Logan Sargeant and Oscar Piastri, and neither of those peers sat under the microscope anywhere near as much as De Vries has.

Tsunoda had a challenging AlphaTauri rookie campaign, too, with Pierre Gasly outclassing him in an AT02 that's much more competitive than this year's AT04, yet the Japanese racer remains in Formula 1 long after his first 10 races.

De Vries, it seems, was judged on a different scale, with one race for a notoriously slippery Williams FW44 at Formula 1's highest-speed track being the only benchmark, not the three seasons it took to become Formula 2 champion.

Nonetheless, sympathy can only go so far when you dance with the Helmut Marko-shaped devil, and the same thing that happened to your predecessors happens to you.

What comes next?

Now, expectations will be unrealistically high for Ricciardo instead, to be the one performing miracles with the car that looks destined to finish bottom of the constructors' standings.

It's a cruel irony that the smiley Aussie didn't fancy a drive for a backmarker, instead opting for the Red Bull third driver role, and gets lumped into the team at the bottom of the standings anyway.

We saw so little of De Vries this year, and unless there are some McLaren-at-Silverstone level upgrades ready for the back half of the season, we shouldn't expect to see much Danny Ric either.

Whether Red Bull know this and it's all a long-term plan to prep Ricciardo for a sensational 2024 replacement of Perez or to serve as a warning for the Mexican remains to be seen; both seem equally feasible.

However, this is the same short-term-thinking Red Bull that knee-jerkingly hired each of De Vries and Perez after a good race, so only time will tell what their plan – if they have one – is.

There's only one thing for sure out of all this mess, Netflix is the real winner.