Nyck de Vries heads to a new venue this week, having never raced at Jeddah, but the F1 rookie is looking forward to the challenge and hopes the tracks better suits AlphaTauri’s AT04 package.
De Vries’ efforts in Bahrain in F1’s opening round of 2023 yielded but a 14th place finish.
The result was conditioned in part by the team’s split approach to its race strategy that did not favor the Dutchman, and in part by the performance level of AlphaTauri’s new car which showed potential on race day in the hands of Yuki Tsunoda but which still requires much improvement.
“I think there is no hiding that we’re not exactly where we want to be in terms of performance,” said de Vries in the Faenza squad’s Saudi Arabian GP preview. “There is still a lot of work to be done.
“We feel like we need to close the gap even more in low-speed corners and Bahrain has a lot of those so we hope that Saudi will suit our package a little bit better.
“Ultimately, the midfield is so extremely close and fighting for points is going to be a tough battle because you have at least four top teams in front which are already taking eight positions.
“It’s going to be a challenge, but we’ve just got to make sure we don’t leave anything unturned so that we can capitalise on potential opportunities.”
De Vries reckons that tyre degradation that proved a handful in Bahrain will not be a major concern at Jeddah.
“Tyre degradation was an important factor in the first race, but I think Bahrain is a strong outlier when it comes to degradation,” he said. “
“The tarmac is probably the oldest of the calendar, so I’m very confident that in Saudi it will be a different story, but we will have to wait and see whether that works in our favour.”
The 28-year-old said that AlphaTauri’s race pace was encouraging at Sakhir, but conceded that more races are necessary for the team to getter a better understanding of its car’s true potential.
“I think we were positively surprised by our race performance in Bahrain,” he added. “We were clearly in the mix but again, that’s only one weekend.
“I think we need to do more races to get a bigger picture before we can draw conclusions.
“Doing a day’s testing for Pirelli at Sakhir after the Grand Prix was useful. All the mileage is very welcome, especially at this time of the year. Therefore, it was definitely valuable for us to get it done.
“As for Saudi, I attended the race last year, but I’ve never driven the Jeddah track, even though I’ve driven it quite a lot on the simulator, most recently last week.
“It seems very cool: quick and tricky. I’m honestly very much looking forward to the challenge, learning a new track and being back out racing.”
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De Vries hopes ‘quick and tricky’ Jeddah will better suit AlphaTauri F1i.com.
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