Nyck De Vries, who won the Formula E championship in 2021, has been with Mercedes since 2020 and was offered the chance to drive for Williams.
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After his FP1 appearance for the team in Barcelona, Williams’ Dave Robson heaped praise on Mercedes reserve Nyck De Vries, stating that the former Formula 2 champion had the talent to be a top quality competition driver. De Vries, who won the Formula E championship in 2021, has been with Mercedes since 2020 and was offered the chance to drive for Williams in first practice at the Spanish Grand Prix in lieu of Alex Albon. The Dutchman’s performance left Robson speechless.
“His pace was there. His ability to understand the tyre and do the out-lap correctly, was really impressive, and then after that, his feedback post-session was extremely good. He had some very useful comments on the balance of the car, which agrees quite well with what we’ve heard from the two race drivers. So, I think in that regard, considering he only gets an hour in the car, I think he did a really good job, and he clearly has what he needs to be to be an absolute top quality competition driver. Expressed Robson.
During his hour in the FW44, De Vries did 28 laps of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, finishing 18th quickest and a tenth of a second ahead of Williams driver Nicholas Latifi. De Vries’ performance was made all the more astounding by the fact that he didn’t get much time in the simulator before stepping into the car to run Albon’s engineering programme, and Robson believes De Vries handled the challenge admirably. With this kind of ability he is worthy of a place on the grid. He banked on his opportunity and impressed many.
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“I think everything he did… was really good. He didn’t put a foot wrong. He completed the engineering programme that we needed him to do, which for us was the most important bit. We gave him the prime tyre for his first run yesterday, which we knew would be a little bit difficult. But at least it gave him the opportunity to do a good number of laps. And then to go straight from that all the way to the qualifying compound is a big ask for anyone and actually, you can see in the lap time he did a very good job.” opined Robson.
