De Vries Out, Ricciardo In: The Curse of Red Bull's Mid-Season Driver Swaps

Posted July 12, 2023 | by Lydia Angel-Fox

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Silly Season has come early this year with the shocking announcement that Red Bull third driver Daniel Ricciardo will replace AlphaTauri’s Nyck De Vries for the rest of the season. However, upon further reflection, this news might not be so shocking after all given Red Bull’s history of swapping drivers out mid-season. One has only to think back to 2019 when Red Bull unceremoniously demoted Pierre Gasly down to Toro Rosso after only 12 races, replacing him with a rookie Alex Albon. Poor Albon did not last long either, as he too was left without a seat when Sergio Perez signed his Red Bull contract in 2021.

In fact, Red Bull’s golden boy Max Verstappen was part of a mid-season swap back in 2016 when he was promoted from Toro Rosso to Red Bull, taking the seat of Daniil Kvyat. Of course this swap proved immensely successful as Verstappen is now a two-time World Champion, but it does provoke some questions about the cutthroat nature of Red Bull’s racing team.

It is no secret that Formula 1 is a merciless sport both on and off track. To keep your seat, you must race fast but you must negotiate faster because with only 20 seats on the grid, opportunities are slim and there is always someone eyeing your seat.

In the early 2000s, it was not uncommon to see lower level teams swap out drivers mid-way through the season in an attempt to bolster their ability to score points. However, in the last decade, it has become much less common, with backmarker teams allowing rookie drivers to race around at the back of the grid to gain experience (Red Bull of course being the exception to this rule from time to time). It is after all a bit silly to expect a rookie in a backmarker team to be vying for podiums or even steady points when their more experienced teammates can’t achieve that type of result.

Therefore, despite Red Bull’s history of mid-season driver swaps, Nyck De Vries’ swift exit after only 10 races does come as a shock because he is after all a rookie in arguably the worst car on the grid (AlphaTauri currently sits last in the Constructor’s standings with two points, both scored by teammate Yuki Tsunoda). Unlike in 2016 or 2019 where a driver was demoted from Red Bull to Toro Rosso for failing to match their highly competitive teammate, De Vries sees himself fired altogether. Now one could argue that De Vries’ rookie status does not compare to the other rookies, 22 year old Logan Sargeant (also 0 points) or 21 year old Oscar Piastri (17 points) since De Vries is 28 years old and holds the 2021 Formula E World Drivers Championship title. But one could also argue that despite De Vries’ age and success in other series, he is still new to driving Formula 1 cars which differ greatly from Formula E, and as mentioned earlier, he is driving the worst car on the grid. I would agree that De Vries is prone to errors (specifically crashing into Haas driver Kevin Magnussen on numerous occasions), however, he is no worse than Nicholas Latifi who drove for the Williams team for two full seasons. De Vries was also not wildly far off from teammate Yuki Tsunoda, often qualifying one or two positions lower, and at times higher than him.

We are therefore left with the question of whether rookies deserve a full season to develop their skills before being sacked. At most teams the answer is yes, and often they are given more than a year (provided they bring adequate money to the team, as Formula 1 is after all a money hungry sport), but I digress, this is Red Bull we are talking about. In the end, should De Vries have been allowed to race a full season? Probably. Would he have been sacked by 2024, also probably, but it certainly makes one wonder about the cutthroat culture at Red Bull and the confidence they place in their drivers.