F1 News: Nyck de Vries Breaks Silence For First Time After Firing From AlphaTauri

Nyck de Vries has broken his silence on social media since his contract with AlphaTauri was terminated after only ten races. The Dutch driver showed a level of performance that wasn't able to persuade the powers that be in Red Bull to keep him on, and before he could even get used to the car, he was replaced with Daniel Ricciardo.

De Vries has littered headlines recently after he was quoted to have made a comment about how he disagreed with how Max Verstappen won the 2021 F1 championship. This, as stated by his manager, was untrue. In fact, it was fairly obvious that it wasn't true so us here at si.com / F1Briefings didn't report on it, but now de Vries himself has confirmed that he hasn't spoken to media since he left F1.

"A short note from me… After recent events, I decided to take some time for myself away from social media, which I will continue to do.

!I would like to thank Red Bull and Scuderia AlphaTauri for the opportunity to live my dream. Of course it hurts that the F1 chance I dreamed of for so long ended prematurely. But life is not a destination, it’s a journey, and sometimes you have to take the hard road to get where you want to be.

"I am grateful for our privileged lives, proud of our journey and my family ❤️. This is just another experience, we move on and look forward to the next chapter.

"Thank you to everyone for your kind and encouraging messages in the past week. It’s been heart-warming to feel your support 🙏🏻.

"PS: I received some interesting articles about things I’ve said in the last week. For clarity, I haven’t spoken to any media and for the time being I’ll enjoy some me time. Wishing you all a nice summer."

We were sad to see the 28 year old leave Formula 1 after such a short time behind the wheel. If anything, I feel as though he was pulled out far too immaturely, which stopped him from really showing his true potential in what is clearly an underperforming car.

Christian Horner, Red Bull's team principal, was clear about the driver's place in the team:

“Look, Nyck is a very capable driver and a Formula E Champion and Formula 2 Champion. He’s obviously got a lot of experience,” Horner said.

“He’s not a young driver as such, from an age perspective. And I just didn’t see how it fitted within the junior programme. It was always a stopgap.”

Obviously, his age played a large part of the decision. Because, strangely, he is old to be starting a career in F1. And if he was younger - as young as Yuki Tsunoda was when he started for example - I feel like he would have had more of a chance to flower.

But, this wasn't to be. So I wish Nyck the very best for his future, and of course we'll be watching him as he continues to race.