Nyck de Vries, late flowering

From his beginnings as a karting terror to his exile in Formula E through years of successful and sluggish promotional formulas, the Dutchman never gave up on his Formula 1 dreams, despite the pitfalls encountered along the way. His feat of entering the points at Monza as a luxury replacement behind the wheel of the Williams last September convinced AlphaTauri to sign him for 2023. Portrait of an outstanding worker with breathtaking resilience.

Published on 07/01/2023 à 17:00

⁰ View comments)

Nyck De Vries will make his F1 debut in 2023. © Williams

There are appointments with destiny that sometimes take longer to honor than expected. There Formula 1 et Nyck de Vries, it is the story of an obvious fact, which time had ended up eroding. But you never escape your destiny. Since its beginnings in karting, of which he was European champion in 2009, then double world champion in 2010 and 2011, the young man was quickly scheduled for the summits. “From the kart, he was an alien, remembers Gwen Lagrue, head of pilot development at Mercedes and great connoisseur of the world of karting. In the timeline, he arrived just before Max Verstappen. It’s simple, for five years, we were busted by two Dutchmen” smiled our witness, who had the misfortune, at the time, to belong to the opposite camp. If the two Batavians will find themselves in the fold Red Bull in 2023, the path taken by De Vries, although two years older (27 years compared to 25 for Max), will have been steeper.

Born in Sneek, about 1 hours north of Amsterdam, Hendrik “Nyck” de Vries grew up in the province of Friesland, to which he is extremely attached, as evidenced by the red hearts that he systematically displays on his helmets and which are as much the symbol of his province ch�