The emotional state at AlphaTauri after qualifying for the Formula 1 race in Baku could hardly be more different. While Yuki Tsunoda was able to move into Q3 for the first time this year and secured a strong eighth place on the grid for Sunday, Nyck de Vries is at the very end of the field after an accident.
For the Dutchman it is the next disappointment in a season in which things are not yet going well for him. Many had expected the former Formula 2 and Formula E champion to have his team-mate under control, but Tsunoda easily leads the team’s qualifying duel 4-0.
So far, de Vries has only made it into Q2 once, in all other three races he had to be content with one of the last three places – including in Baku, where he was only 20th and last after an accident.
“It’s very disappointing,” he says angrily, because it had started promisingly with sixth place in practice. “The car looked really competitive this weekend, so we were hoping to take advantage of that, but then it ended quite early in Q1.”
The question is what actually led to the accident, which looked quite strange. Because de Vries drove into the barrier in turn 3 with quite a lot of excess speed. “To be honest, I don’t know exactly what happened,” he says. “I also don’t want to draw any conclusions without seeing exactly what happened.”
Is brake-by-wire the problem?
It was noticeable, however, that de Vries was pushed back into the garage before driving out. The AlphaTauri driver had already lined up in the pit lane in front of the red light, but when it turned green, the Dutchman was pushed back from the queue.
“The alarm is still there and the brake-by-wire is still off. What should I do?” He radioed. Answer from his engineer: “We have a problem. We’ll try to solve it in the garage.”
A problem with brake-by-wire would be a logical explanation for the accident. However, the team itself does not mention this in its press release and only mentions “cold tyres”. The problem is said to have been fixed in the garage.
“Nyck’s car had a small issue that forced us to wheel him back into the garage to solve it, costing him a lap, putting him behind and leaving him with cold tyres,” says Chief Race Engineer Jonathan Eddolls quoted there. “On his lap, he blocked at Turn 3 [die Reifen] and hit the wall, which ended his qualifying.”
Even de Vries himself doesn’t want to push it prematurely to brake-by-wire: “I don’t want to express any suspicions. I just want to go back and see what happened,” he says. “I’ve been waiting in a car outside the circuit for an hour or more, so before I jump to any conclusions, I want to see what happened.”
AlphaTauri is doing very well in Baku
This is particularly frustrating for the rookie when he sees how well AlphaTauri is performing this weekend, as de Vries’ sixth place in practice was underscored by Yuki Tsunoda’s eighth place in qualifying.
“The car looks very competitive this weekend,” he says. “And I think if we look at our first three weekends in fairness we weren’t in the same position as we were this weekend. So it’s very disappointing when it looks like we could do better this weekend and then we do something like this.”
The racing team has an upgrade in store for Baku, which is primarily aimed at speed on the straights. “I felt really fast on the first straight in practice,” says Tsunoda. “The car seems to be significantly faster than in the first three races. We’ve definitely made a step in terms of speed on the straights.”
The Japanese thinks Baku suits his team well anyway. Pierre Gasly had finished on the podium here in 2021, and in the disappointing 2022 season the Frenchman also achieved the team’s best result of the season here with fifth place. “So we knew we could expect a better performance than the last three races,” said Tsunoda.