Why AlphaTauri Gave up on F1 Rookie Nyck de Vries after Just 10 Races

• Daniel Ricciardo was picked to replace Nyck deVries at AlphaTauri, beginning this weekend at the the Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix.

• de Vries' best finish in his brief 10-race AlphaTauri career was a modest 12th in Monaco.

• But the question begs as to why the quick hook after just 10 races.

When it comes to Red Bull's decision to sack Formula 1 rookie Nyck de Vries from its AlphaTauri team this past week, one point was made clear on Friday in Hungary.

De Vries simply wasn't given much of a chance.

According to AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost, it was parent Red Bull officials that decided to make the switch from de Vries to Daniel Ricciardo. Granted, de Vries' best finish in his brief 10-race AlphaTauri career was a modest 12th in Monaco, but the question still begs as to why the quick hook.

Tost said on Friday, ahead of this weekend's F1 Hungary Grand Prix, that the decision came down to just two races.

"This was also a very emotional decision, because we have a really good relationship with Nyck," Tost said. "I just spoke with him on the telephone last week, and he didn’t have an easy time with us. First of all, as a rookie—and this is generally for rookies—the first half of the season is not so easy because they are racing at many race tracks which they don’t know, like Melbourne, Miami, Saudi Arabia. Then they come to Baku, where it’s a Sprint race, that means it’s only FP1 and then it’s already the qualifying.

"It was difficult for him. Also, our car was not so competitive, and if a car is not so good, it’s even more complicated. I expected a much better performance in Austria and in Silverstone because both of these tracks, Nyck knew quite well, but the performance didn’t come up and we decided to change him."

De Vries finished 17th at both Austria and Silverstone. Teammante Yuki Tsunoda, with 53 F1 races to his credit, was actually less impressive over that apparently critical (at least Tost thought so in regards to de Vries) two-race stretch, finishing 19th and 16th.

So, while Tsunoda has scored just two points in his last 32 Formula 1 races (10th-place finishes this year at Melbourne and Baku), the 28-year-old de Vries was the one let go to make room for the 34-year-old Ricciardo after a rather modest 10-race tryout.

Tost pointed out that de Vries was lacking experience at upcoming tracks including Singapore, Japan, Mexico, Austin and Qatar. In effect, the team gave up on de Vries and assumed he had little chance of showing improvement in the upcoming stretch.

"Now, with Ricciardo we have an experienced driver in there," Tost said. "Which also helps us to develop the car, to find out better where are the deficiencies of the car and hopefully to improve the performance of the car."

Interestingly, Tost said that de Vries was actually strong when it came to offering technical feedback.

"You know, Nyck is a very experienced driver," Tost said. "There's a reason that he won the Formula 3 championship, Formula 2, and the Formula E World Championship—and his technical feedback was very good, very detailed.

"Yuki (is) in his second year, plus 10 or 11 races. That means he still is in a learning process and he will also learn a lot from Daniel Ricciardo, but the technical feedback from Nyck was very good."

So, de Vries was in an uncompetitive car, racing on tracks he wasn't familiar with, was actually beating his more experienced teammate in two of the past six races, and he was advanced with giving technical feedback.

Yet, after 10 races, Red Bull decided de Vries wasn't good enough to race with AlphaTauri.

Curious sacking, indeed.