They got him, Nyck de Vries is out and Daniel Riccardo is in as the Formula One crazy season just got real. Red Bull’s satellite team Alpha Tauri has ejected de Vries after a run of below-par performances and replaced him with Daniel “Golden Boy” Riccardo. De Vries was a dead man walking before the current season started. Like a Star Trek extra he has been killed off, written out of the plot line by puppet masters Red Bull. Mad Dog Marko, Red Bull’s minister without an identifiable job, started the process of elimination with regular public criticisms of de Vries’s performance.
However, de Vries comes with a lot of credibility he won the 2020–21 Formula E World Championship and the 2019 FIA Formula 2 Championship, as well as the 2010 and 2011 Karting World Championships. Formula One is a level above where skill and talent alone do not suffice. It requires finesse and attention to fine details.
It is common for skilled drivers to experience difficulty adjusting to driving an F1 car. Unfortunately, de Vries was unable to meet the high expectations he had set for himself. And with the ever-watchful Red Bull vanguard bearing down upon him, de Vries became a marked man at which point simple mistakes became amplified.
From the outside Red Bull comes across as a lion’s den, the team sets high standards and expects the same from all who drive it or Alpha Tauri. The Red Bull drivers system is brutal, few drivers survive and those that do are one short walk away from death row.
Those who do not survive are given the equivalent of a public hanging or become the severed head left on a spike outside the King’s main residence to serve as a warning for all to see. As for Riccardo, he returns to Formula One after two miserable years at McLaren.
Riccardo was effectively sacked from his drive at McLaren in 2022 to make way for Oscar Piastri at a cost of £20M to McLaren. With no other seat available in 2023 Riccardo opted to return to Red Bull as a reserve driver. Somewhat conveniently Nyck de Vries struggled to make the impact he himself boasted about prior to entering F1.
Nyck de Vries will quickly be forgotten by Formula One and the media that feeds off such news. Moving forward, expect a lot of warm fuzzy words from Red Bull followed by a media blitz of a happy smiley Riccardo who will likely return to Red Bull in 2024. But there is a small matter of engineering out Sergio Perez.
Rest assured Red Bull is busy working on a plan to remove Perez, and the weapon of choice as always will be Mad Dog Marko… what does the Mad Dog actually do?
