After the recently concluded saga involving Nyck De Vries, the Red Bull bosses received a lot of backlash from a huge part of the fanbase. Even though it was the Dutch driver’s rookie season, his employers gave him just 10 races to show his worth, and when he failed to do so, they replaced him with Daniel Ricciardo. Now, the blame is falling on one particular individual in charge at Red Bull.
De Vries’ fate was sealed as soon as Ricciardo suited up for the Pirelli tire test in Silverstone. Ricciardo’s pace was so impressive, that just within an hour of his session, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner gave the team the heads up, to get back him to the grid,
Horner saw his former driver put in blistering lap times, and decided to call Helmut Marko, who seems to be running things at AlphaTauri at the moment. On the phone, they decided to go ahead with the switch. In fact, they wanted to make it official before the public got to know about their planned sacking of De Vries.
Helmut Marko blamed for shattered Nyck De Vries dreams
De Vries wasn’t performing well, yes. But fans took the Dutch driver’s side, because it was hist first ever season in F1. Plus he got just 10 races to show his worth, and was under pressure throughout. For this, the majority of the blame has been aimed towards Helmut Marko.
Before the move was completed, Johnny Herbert and Billy Monger spoke about the De Vries situation at AlphaTauri as well as Ricciardo’s possibility of replacing Perez at Red Bull in the Lift The Lid podcast live from Silverstone.
Dismissing the idea of Ricciardo replacing Perez at Milton-Keynes, they primarily focused on the then-rumored AlphaTauri move. Additionally, the also focused on De Vries’ racing pedigree.
BREAKING: Daniel Ricciardo to replace Nyck de Vries at AlphaTauri for the rest of the 2023 season
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— Formula 1 (@F1) July 11, 2023
Herbert and Monger felt that De Vries, who is 28 years old and won both the F2 and Formula E Championships in the past would get some more time to prove himself at AlphaTauri, arguably the worst team on the grid this season. This was because he needed a bit of time in order to get used to F1, which is a whole different world of its own.
However, working under pressure while reporting to a man like Helmut Marko was always going to be a risk. Talking about this, the experts pointed out on how the 80-year-old Austrian is a “brutal” man when taking decisions. In the end, Marko did do what many thought he would. He decided to end De Vries’ AlphaTauri spell prematurely and brought back Daniel Ricciardo.
Red Bull and Marko always have been brutal
The mid-season sacking of Nyck de Vries wasn’t the only time when Red Bull and Marko displayed how unforgiving the environment at their team can be. There were multiple instances when drivers were shown the exit door midway through the season, because of poor performances.
Sebastian Bourdais and Scott Speed were both Toro Rosso (AlphaTauri’s former name) drivers, who didn’t get time to show their worth in the team. They were sacked in the 2009 and 2007 seasons respectively.
More notably, fans remember how Pierre Gasly and Daniil Kvyat lost their Red Bull seats before being given a whole season to prove themselves. Kvyat lost his Red Bull seat after just four races as he was forced to make way for Verstappen in 2016. On the other hand, Gasly, after just 12 races had to return to Toro Rosso to make way for Alex Albon in 2019. Just a year later, Albon too, lost his place although he was given a full season to show his talent.
