Hendrik Johannes Nicasius “Nyck” de Vries was born February 6th 1995 in Uitwellingerga, Netherlands. He currently drives for the Scuderia Alpha Tauri F1 team, having signed a contract with them in the latter half of the 2022 season that puts him in the Alpha Tauri seat for 2023 and 2024. He won the Formula E World Championship for the 2020-21 season and won the Formula 2 Championship in 2019. He also won the Karting World Championship in 2010 after being signed to the McLaren young driver program, and won it again in 2011 before moving up to the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 series, which he eventually won in 2014. De Vries has also competed in the World Endurance Championship and drove in the LMP2 category at Le Mans each year from 2019 through 2022. In 2021 and 2022, while competing in the WEC and Formula E, de Vries also served as reserve driver for the Mercedes-AMG Formula One team.
Nyck is the son of Dutch parents Hendrik Jan de Vries and Naomi Hesseling. He has a younger sister named Seychelle de Vries who he’s very close to. In fact, Nyck says that his father and sister are his main support unit. His father owns several car dealerships and has done some Formula Renault racing of his own. He wanted to share the racing bug with Nyck and got him started in karting around the age of five. As Nyck moved up through the ranks his father was behind him all the way. At the Italian Grand Prix when it was announced on short notice that Nyck would be driving in place of Alexander Albon for the Williams team, Hendrik immediately jumped on a plane and flew to Italy to see his son’s race debut. A dream come true, Nyck was able to finish 9th and score two points for the team. After the race, Nyck and his father traveled to Monaco where Nyck lives and just hung out at the beach the following day. Nyck said it was difficult for them to speak about the previous day because whenever they started they were both flooded with tears of joy. As evidence, on the previous day, while on the grid standing next to Nyck’s car before the race, Dutch television tried to interview Hendrik and he was so choked up he could barely speak.
At the age of 27, Nyck de Vries is a few years older than most rookies in Formula One. It seems that he should have found a race seat after he won the Formula 2 Championship in 2019 or shortly thereafter as most other drivers do, but the opportunity wasn’t there at the time. Still, his driving skills were highly regarded and he was often seen on Formula One race weekends in the Mercedes Garage standing next to Mercedes-AMG Team Principal, Toto Wolff. As we know in the world of Formula One, luck often plays a major role when fortunes are won or lost, and in 2022 all of de Vries’ hard work finally paid off. As a Mercedes reserve driver, Nyck was granted the opportunity to drive in free practice on race weekends for other Mercedes-powered teams, Williams being one of them. In 2022 de Vries had driven in free practice at various tracks for Alexander Albon at Willaims, as well as Lewis Hamilton and George Russell at Mercedes. He was even on call at the Brazilian Grand Prix for Lando Norris at McLaren should Lando not have recover from a bout of food poisoning. In the end, de Vries did not get to drive in that race, but it shows an enormous amount of respect that he was trusted in that capacity, and as luck would have it, de Vries got his chance at Monza in Italy when Alexander Albon was unable to compete due to an appendicitis. Nyck found himself with an opportunity that was long overdue and he rose to the occasion. The attention he garnered landed him a full-time drive at Scuderia Alpha Tauri where he will be able to showcase his massive talent in 2023 and 2024 and fulfill his childhood dream of becoming a Formula One driver.