De Vries hopes to pave way up 'It's extremely tight and competitive'

Nyck de Vries feels that from the Monaco Grand Prix onwards he has started the way up. The first weekends were difficult for the rookie, but the AlphaTauri driver feels he is in a much better place now, he tells GPblog and others at the press conference in Spain.

De Vries made a few mistakes and so his chair legs were immediately sawed off. The Dutchman also does not deny that he made a few misses too many. "It's fair to say that I've made, or I personally believe that I've made a little bit too many mistakes. I do think there were moments that I was competitive and showing good potential, but I didn't quite succeed to turn it into a result or execute a result at the end of the weekend."

Still, the 28-year-old driver also stressed that only five GPs had been run up to Monaco, so it was still early in the season. "When it comes to pressure, I think as a driver you always fight for your survival, because throughout your career you always need to perform and deliver to continue your career forward successfully. So I don't really think that is different now than at any other time in my career. But I can acknowledge that F1 has been very different to any other championship I've been racing," he explained.

Differences are small in F1

AlphaTauri has not built the best car on the grid with the AT04. The team bivouacs at the bottom of the midfield and so, as a driver, you need to maximise to have any chance of scoring points at all. "The midfield is extremely tight and competitive and the margins are just very fine."

De Vries explained that in Formula 2 and Formula 3, he had much less time to prepare and everything was a lot less in depth, also because there was simply less time. In both racing classes, there is only one free practice, while in Formula 1 there is much more time and everything can be figured out a lot. As a result, the differences are automatically smaller as well, said the still scoreless F1 driver.