Andrew Shovlin, trackside engineering director of Mercedes Formula 1 team, believes the team could regret loosing Nyck de Vries to Red Bull.
De Vries made his F1 debut last year at Italian Grand Prix. He replaced Alex Albon at Williams, who was unwell for the race. His impressive performance caught eyes of rival teams, landing him at AlphaTauri for 2023.
Shovlin is very fond of Dutch drivers, especially Max Verstappen and de Vries. He does not hold back from appreciating the latter openly.
“I have no doubt Nyck has the ability to win races if he is with the right team and with the right car,” Shovlin stated in the book titled Max & Nyck.
“Whether he can become world champion will be down to him. He has less time to achieve it given his age. But he makes up for that with his experience.
“We had an agreement with Nyck that if we couldn’t put him with a Mercedes team, he could go for the best option. And we might regret letting him go.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not long when we’re racing against him in the Red Bull factory team. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that happened in the next 12 months or so.”
The book is being released in the Netherlands. And it analyses the impact of Max Verstappen on Formula 1. It also explain how the Red Bull contributed to making the best out of two Dutch drivers.
Shovlin on de Vries
Shovlin believes Mercedes could not stop de Vries landing an F1 seat in a rival team.
“He fitted in our team very well, but you can’t hold someone back,” he added.
“He was the ideal test and reserve driver for us. If we could have kept him on the shelf to use him when needed, we would have done that, but then we would have prevented a driver pursuing his dream.
“With his Formula E title, he has meant a lot to the Mercedes brand and he has also been excellent as a reserve driver. That is why we also wanted to help him further.
“This is also important for the future. The chance of Nyck wanting to come back to this team will be influenced by how fair we’ve been with him over the years. There’s nothing to say that Nyck won’t be driving a Mercedes one day in the future.”
