'Nyck De Vries's Monza drive was harder than it looked — will it earn him a 2023 F1 seat?'

F1

Why Nyck de Vries's Italian GP performance wasn't simply a drive in the park, F1's superlicence controversy, and Red Bull's faux pas: Tony Dodgins reveals more on the big talking points from Monza

Williams of Nyck De Vries in 2022 Italian Grand Prix

Always a winner, De Vries impressed on his F1 race debut

Alex Pantling/F1 via Getty Images

Before the Italian GP weekend got underway, with Monza celebrating its 100th anniversary and Ferrari its 75th year as an independent manufacturer since the 125S rolled off the production line, Charles Leclerc was asked for his thoughts.

“I think it was 2014 when I first came here,” he recalled, “for my first year in single seaters. And I think – but I’ve got a very bad memory so this might be wrong – that it was my first victory in single-seaters. So, I always liked Monza.”

He wasn’t wrong. He scored a Monza double on his way to runner-up spot in the Formula Renault 2.0 Alps series, driving for Fortec. The man who won it, by over 100 points, was a certain Nyck de Vries. George Russell finished fourth, with both De Vries and Russell driving for the same Korainen team. Okay, it was third-year Nyck versus first-year Charles and George, but De Vries has always been a winner.

A double European and world karting champion, he won the Formula 2 championship in 2019 at the third time of asking and then the Formula E championship at the second attempt in 2020-21.

Monza was De Vries’s Sliding Doors moment and he was determined to grab it.

Talk to those who have watched De Vries closely and you hear that he ‘works up to it’ rather than being instantly quick and that sometimes he can go missing. Inconsistency can be a thing. In this year’s Formula E campaign, for example, he finished ninth while Mercedes EQ team mate Stoffel Vandoorne won the title – the exact opposite of the previous season. Who knows, maybe that was the deal!

People tend to get more excited about first-year winners, like Leclerc and Russell in Formula 2. De Vries is already 27 and, when he was passed over in favour of Alex Albon at Williams this year, you had the feeling that maybe his F1 boat had sailed.

But then came Albon’s appendicitis last weekend. De Vries was having a coffee, talking to Mercedes guests in the Paddock Club when he got the call to hot-foot it down to the other end of the paddock and jump into the Williams for FP3. It was his unexpected opportunity — his Sliding Doors moment — and he was determined to grab it.

Nyck de Vries in Mercedes Aston Martin and Williams outfits during the 2022 Italian Grand Prix weekend

De Vries arrived at Monza in Mercedes colours, switched to Aston Martin for FP1, then joined Williams on Saturday and Sunday

Getty Images

The myriad grid penalties helped him qualify eighth, sure, but he described ninth place in the race, points on his F1 debut, as a “dream”. Those who had raced against him most of their careers were delighted for him. Post-race, sitting alongside Leclerc and race-winner Max Verstappen, Russell said: “Throughout all our karting career the three of us raced against him, knew him well and he was always one of the very best. There’s no doubt he deserves a place in F1.”

Some of the hardened hacks in the press room acknowledged his driver-of-the-day winning performance but had their enthusiasm under control. Look, they said, it’s a great job to jump in and outqualify / outrace the guy who’s been in the car two seasons, but it was Nicholas Latifi, not Ayrton Senna.

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Others have even suggested that the slightly-build Dutchman may not be strong enough and, certainly, he needed help out of the car post-race, his arms and shoulders numbed. But that’s not entirely surprising given any unfamiliar cockpit. It certainly helped that it was Monza and not, say, Singapore, but being slight never impeded Alain Prost, and we have power steering.

What’s probably not universally recognised is how difficult it is to do what De Vries did, at Monza of all places. The Autodromo Nazionale may not be that physical, but it offers other unique challenges.

Back in the day, I used to do some work with Toyota during between-race testing, when a driver’s testing mileage would easily outweigh his racing mileage over a season.

This was pre-2007, when F1 introduced a sole tyre supplier. So there was a Bridgestone / Michelin tyre war going on and tyre evaluation always formed a large part of any test. For Monza, that was supplemented by running the car with barely any rear wing at the same time as arriving at a suspension / ride height set-up compliant enough to allow the driver to bang the car over the kerbs through the chicanes, minimising time loss.

Jarno Trulli, something of an artist in a racing car, had his sensibilities offended by the need to bounce over kerbs and always used to approach a Monza test with his enthusiasm in check. He didn’t go as far as throwing a sicky, but was always happy when it was Ralf Schumacher’s day at the wheel!

Jarno Trulli going through a chicane at Monza in 2005

Monza kerb-crashing wasn’t Jarno Trulli’s forte

Grand Prix Photo

The brief was always, “Your job today is to blat around Monza as fast as you can, braking as late as you can, taking note of how it feels and any tyre drop-off. Then come in, we’ll bolt on another of our 25 sets of rubber, and you do it all again. Okay?”

That was pretty much it all day long, with a fair degree of early chaos and red flags, as people acclimatised to braking down from 200mph for the chicanes with precious little assistance from any downforce, without swapping ends and littering the track with gravel, annihilating polystyrene bollards, etc. Or, suffering the odd brake failure with discs running at 1200C.

“We earn our money on a day like today…” Ralf once smiled, with the hint of a grimace.

The point is, to go quickly you need to have enough confidence to be happy to attack without the type of downforce normally commensurate with an F1 car, and enough feel to use all the road through the Lesmos and Parabolica without overdoing it. Hard enough if you’re a regular. But very, very tough if you are stepping in for a one-off.

De Vries did a solid job for Mercedes when he lapped within half a second of Russell in an FP1 outing at the French GP, and it was no doubt a blessing for him that he’d had the Friday morning Monza FP1 session with Aston Martin, in Sebastian Vettel’s car. Across 22 laps, he was just over a second shy of Lance Stroll, but on harder tyres with a different wing level. There was a brief excursion into the gravel, as there was in FP3 in the Williams, as he got a handle on the kind of challenge outlined above.

Zhou Guanyu in hot pursuit of Nyck de Vries

Under-pressure De Vries avoided a calamitous mistake

Remko de Waal/ANP via Getty Images

In the race, amid a DRS train, it would have been oh-so-easy for De Vries to make a points-losing error, especially as the late-race arm / shoulder pain crept in, but he kept it all together admirably. Whether or not it is enough to win him a Williams or Alpine seat for 2023, remains to be seen.

Elsewhere, there is a bit of controversy over the lack of an F1 superlicence for Colton Herta who, by the totting up procedure, is a few points shy of the 40 required to secure the necessary document.

The superlicence procedure was established to prevent the likes of Yuji Ide finding their way onto an F1 grid again, and to ensure that pockets stuffed with cash are not sufficient. You have to qualify on talent.

“How in the hell does Latifi qualify for a superlicence when a guy who’s won seven IndyCar races, does not?” was a question asked on Saturday night at Monza.

Well, that’s very simple. In what was something of a weak year for F2 (De Vries’s championship season incidentally) in 2019, Latifi finished second in the championship. And anyone who finishes top three automatically scores 40 points and qualifies. Which, generally, you’d figure, would be merited.

Colton Herta receives second place trophy at the 2022 IndyCar Toronto race

As it stands, IndyCar sensation Herta doesn’t make the grade for F1

Penske Entertainment

Herta, meanwhile, may not be Mario Andretti, but became the youngest ever winner of an IndyCar race, aged 18, in the 2019 Laguna Seca season closer. The following season, he finished third in the championship, which earned him 20 superlicence points. He has won races at places like Long Beach, Mid-Ohio, St Petersburg and Laguna Seca, against quality opposition. That he doesn’t qualify, is a total nonsense.

He wasn’t helped by a 2022 IndyCar season, concluded last weekend, in which he finished 10th. But consider this. There were five guys in with a chance of the title. The champion – Will Power for the second time – scores 40 points and automatically qualifies for an F1 superlicence, on a par with F2. But, the guy who finishes fifth, despite being within a gnat’s of the title, scores just eight. Yet, finish fifth in F2, and you pocket 20. Bonkers.

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It’s probably not a surprise that the FIA’s point-scoring system favours the FIA F1 feeder series, F2 and F3. And you can see the argument from those who claim that there should be no exemptions or exceptions made, because it undermines the rules and questions the point of having them at all. But one thing’s for certain – if Herta doesn’t qualify – seven IndyCar wins, nine poles and 11 podiums — then the rules need an overhaul. As they currently stand, a Max Verstappen or Kimi Räikkönen could not have gone down the career path that they did.

Let’s look at what Latifi has achieved outside his 2019 F2 runner-up slot at the fourth time of asking. There’s 10th place in Euro F3 and 11th in Formula Renault 3.5. Oh, and a Florida Winter Tour Rotax karting success a decade ago. You get the point…  Against it, you have to say that Nicholas qualified by the law and, without him and his billionaire father, Michael, Williams may not have survived, so not all bad. But that’s beside the point. Sometimes the law is an ass.

I also heard it said at Monza that F1 may not be minded to do Red Bull (AlphaTauri) any favours right now. Why? Because it wrote its engine rules specifically to bring in Audi and Porsche, and now Red Bull has cocked that up. But surely that can’t be right… All fun and games. But whatever transpires, I find myself hoping that De Vries, who grabbed his chance with both hands in difficult circumstances, gets a full-time seat.