Ricciardo: De Vries can “get back up” after losing AlphaTauri F1 drive

F1 rookie de Vries was dropped by the Faenza team last week and has been replaced by former McLaren driver Ricciardo from this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix.

When asked by Autosport if he had sympathy for de Vries, Ricciardo cited his own experience of returning from a spell out of the cockpit in the first half of this season as an example of what can happen.

“For sure you feel for other drivers,” said Ricciardo, who was himself dropped by McLaren for Oscar Piastri.

“We put a life's work into this. And so it's one of those ones where I do I feel for Nyck.

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“I know in F1 he is not particularly experienced, but in motor racing he is. He is in his late 20s.

“So I feel like he's mature enough to understand the sport. And if he still wants it to work, I think he can get back up and make something happen.

“So yeah, I look at me a year ago, I wasn't sure if I'll ever race an F1 car again. And a year later, here I am. So things can happen. Of course, if he still wants it, keep his chin up.

“It's like anything in life, you get knocked down, but it's how you get back up. And I wish him well. And if I ever saw him on the grid again, then I'll be happy too.”

Daniel Ricciardo, Scuderia AlphaTauri

Photo by: Michael Potts / Motorsport Images

Meanwhile Alex Albon, who was himself dropped by Red Bull at the end of the 2020 season and spent the following year racing in DTM while acting as the team's third driver, said he understood how Ricciardo could return refreshed after a break.

The Williams driver said: "I had a year out, he's had a little bit less, but I really do think that year helped me.

“When you're in the circus, and things aren't going well, and you're just going race to race to race, you're not really able to reflect and to understand really what's going on, you just feel like you're in the washing machine a little bit.

“And having that time, it's important to be able to reflect and to improve. But it's also just purely good in the sense where you get time away, and you can fully reset mentally.

"Because the reset is very important, you start to lose a bit of confidence and having time away I think gets rid of the demons in some respects.

“I valued my time in DTM, because it was actually driving something a little bit different. But it gave me confidence in a different kind of way, I was still driving a racing car. So you still needed to be confident and driving that car kind of did that to me.”

Albon added that he “started more confident than I left” when he did return to F1 ahead of the 2022 season, and believes Ricciardo can experience a similar benefit after two difficult seasons at McLaren.

“Just seeing Daniel and seeing the buzz he has, I think that's happened to him as well,” he said.