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The first of our annual countdown exploring how RaceFans believe each of the drivers in the 2023 season performed over the year. While influenced by RaceFans’ regular driver ratings, they are not based solely on a driver’s average score over the season.
If there was any such thing as cosmic justice in motorsport, every Formula 2 champion would receive at least one reasonable opportunity to compete in Formula 1.
After all, there is supposedly no greater indicator that a driver is ready for the step into world championship-level competition to race against the best in the world than by winning the direct feeder series to Formula 1. Yet 2019 champion Nyck de Vries – like his successors Felipe Drugovich and Theo Pourchaire – found that even claiming the F2 title would not be enough to cause the great iron gates into Formula 1 to swing open.
Instead, De Vries took his talents to sports car racing and Formula E, where he was crowed the all-electric series’ first ever official world champion as sanctioned by the FIA. Eventually, a sudden chance opportunity to replace Alexander Albon at Williams in Monza in 2022 threw De Vries in the frame for an unexpected AlphaTauri seat at the age of 28 – already putting him firmly in the older half of the field as a rookie.
De Vries may have had only slightly more grand prix experience than fellow rookies Oscar Piastri and Logan Sargeant at the start of the season, but had far more years of racing to his CV than peers. However, despite this far higher experience level, De Vries looked far less comfortable and much more error-prone than Piastri, who he was regularly racing near the back of the field with in the early part of the year.
After a decent enough opening round in Bahrain, he arrived at the unfamiliar Jeddah circuit and lost valuable practice time with a power unit problem on Saturday morning. A spin early in Q1 did not help his confidence and he was eliminated in 18th, but while he made his way up to 14th by the end of the race on Sunday, he admitted he had not been aggressive enough while the field were closed up in the early laps.
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He failed to finish in Melbourne, although that was entirely down to Sargeant taking him out at the final restart. But De Vries only had himself to blame for a woeful weekend in Baku. He crashed out of Friday qualifying, then was eliminated slowest from SQ1 before hitting team mate Yuki Tsunoda on the opening lap of the sprint race. Things got no better on Sunday as another mistake saw him clip the wall at turn five just ten laps into the grand prix, sending him out of the race and capping one of the worst performances by a driver all season.
He continued to show a concerning level of awareness when he locked up under braking for the first corner at the start of the Miami Grand Prix and hit Lando Norris’s McLaren, effectively ruining his chances for the rest of a race which featured no Safety Cars to allow him to make up for time lost due to damage from the clash. He put in a much more respectable performance in Monaco, a track he knew from F2 and FE, and kept his car out of the barriers across the weekend in tricky conditions. But in Barcelona he was never in contention for points throughout the grand prix while Tsunoda was scrapping for 10th place.
Nyck de Vries
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In what turned out to be De Vries’ final three appearances, he was consistently underwhelming. He looked slightly desperate lunging at Kevin Magnussen in Montreal and causing them both to get stuck down an escape road, but then made even more mistakes the next weekend at the Red Bull Ring, including another badly-judged move forcing Magnussen off the track and earning a penalty in the grand prix.
That display at Red Bull’s home circuit might have ultimately sealed his fate. Despite a more controlled performance over the British Grand Prix weekend, he was again not able to beat Tsunoda over a race distance. After leaving Silverstone, De Vries was informed that his services were no longer required by Red Bull and his time as a Formula 1 driver was over.
Although he never got the opportunity to try and find improvement over the second half of the season like so many drivers who have struggled before him have done, he can at least be grateful that he got his opportunity to achieve his life’s dream of reaching Formula 1 – which is far more than many highly talented racing drivers ever get to say.
Who was the best driver of the 2023 Formula 1 season? Cast your vote in our annual poll here:
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