De Vries in F1: how did previous AlphaTauri rookies fare in debut year?

Nyck de Vries will make his debut in Formula 1 next season and where everyone thought the Dutchman should hope for a chance at Williams, it was suddenly Helmut Marko who showed up at his doorstep. De Vries signed a contract with AlphaTauri and there he will face teammate Yuki Tsunoda. The Dutchman will know that he has to perform if he wants to continue playing for the Faenza-based formation in 2024. But what is the benchmark for our compatriot?

For that, we look at all the rookies who made their F1 entrance at Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri. Seven drivers preceded De Vries as rookies in the king class of motorsport at Red Bull's training team, namely: Yuki Tsunoda, Alexander Albon, Brendon Hartley, Pierre Gasly, Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz and Daniil Kvyat. In this article, we only look at full seasons. Gasly and Hartley already drove five and four GPs respectively in 2017 at Toro Rosso (and actually debuted a few months before the start of 2018), but this data is not included.

How did F1 debutants fare at AlphaTauri?

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We start at the top of the list, talking about the most recent debutants. Tsunoda, De Vries' teammate next year, made his debut in early 2021 and ended up with 32 points and 14th place in the world championship in 22 races. Tsunoda's first season was quite erratic, with him making painful mistakes on several occasions.

Of those 32 World Championship points achieved, no fewer than 12 stemmed from the last Grand Prix of the season, in Abu Dhabi. Tsunoda got his contract extension for 2022 after the 2021 Dutch Grand Prix. In 13 races, Tsunoda scored 18 points. Gasly was already on 66 points at that time, a relatively big difference. Tsunoda couldn't match his teammate at all, but still got a new commitment. There was no one ready from the Red Bull junior programme either, something De Vries might also have to hope for (depending on his performance).

Alexander Albon and his debut

Alexander Albon managed to collect 15 points in his first ever season in Formula 1, which was almost twice as few as Daniil Kvyat. Yet it proved enough to force a switch to Red Bull Racing. Hence, this statistic also features only 12 races. His best finish was sixth in the chaotic, rained-out German Grand Prix.

Gasly and Hartley

Drawing a comparison with Gasly and Hartley may not be lollygagging. After all, as mentioned, both drivers made their debuts back in late 2017. On the other hand, De Vries also already has a GP behind his name as well as having driven several first free practice sessions and unofficial tests with F1 cars, a lot more than was the case for Gasly and Hartley.

We know the story of Hartley: De Vries should not look at that at all. Gasly is a bit more representative in that respect. Already in the second Grand Prix of the year, the Frenchman drove to a very handsome fourth place. In Monaco, Gasly finished seventh, but otherwise his results were disappointing. He mainly feasted on that one outlier at the Bahrain International Circuit. However, it was enough to be told in the summer break that he would be promoted to Red Bull in winter as Verstappen's teammate. Gasly eventually finished 15th in the World Championship with 29 points. As does Tsunoda in 2021: 12 points of those are due to one GP... Consistency was not really there, something that De Vries actually does have (as he proved in recent years).

Even further back in time

In 2015, it was Verstappen and Sainz who debuted at Toro Rosso. Is that year, and Kvyat's in 2014, still very representative as a benchmark for De Vries? Probably not. Should we want to compare De Vries to Verstappen's first year in Formula 1? Probably not. What is nice to point out, however, is that De Vries can go into the books as the best Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri driver of the hybrid era if he manages to score more than 49 points. At least he has five more GPs to do so than Verstappen had in 2015.

Verstappen finished fourth twice on his debut, in Hungary and in the United States. Gasly and Tsunoda also finished around fourth in their debuts, while Albon did not do badly either with a P6. Therein lies a nice challenge for De Vries, but above all it will be about beating his teammate next season.

De Vries at AlphaTauri in 2023

How high De Vries will finish in the world championship in 2023 will mainly depend on how competitive the AT04 is going to be. However, the 27-year-old driver's main mission is to beat teammate Tsunoda as a rookie over 24 races. Never before did a rookie at Toro Rosso or AlphaTauri manage to beat their more experienced teammate. Only Verstappen and Gasly outperformed their teammate in their F1 debut year, but that was (like them) a rookie.

Now if it does not work out for De Vries to immediately stand there and deal with his Japanese stablemate, he need not despair immediately either. AlphaTauri team boss Franz Tost recently indicated that talents need more than a year to show their true speed and, moreover, Helmut Marko seems to have learned from (sometimes) writing off talent too quickly.