Mercedes EQ Formula E driver Nyck de Vries is baffled by the rumours linking him to a Williams seat after a tough start to the 2022 Formula 1 season for Nicholas Latifi.
The Dutchman has won three races in Formula E, and won the 2021 championship in the all-electric series having previously taken the Formula 2 title in 2019.
He finished 10th at this weekend’s Monaco E-Prix while team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne won the race in the Principality, and ahead of the weekend, journalist Joe Saward suggested that Williams would be better off replacing Latifi with the 27-year-old over Alpine’s Oscar Piastri due to the Grove outfit’s desire to build up their own talent pool.
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“In this respect Piastri does not fit in and the team would be better off going with Nyck de Vries, a Mercedes Formula E champion, who is looking for things to do in the future as Mercedes is leaving the all-electric series soon and will sell its team to McLaren,” Saward wrote in his blog.
Indeed, Mercedes will be pulling out of Formula E at the end of the current season in August, perhaps leaving ambiguity as to whether de Vries and Vandoorne will be kept on by the team that ultimately replaces it.
De Vries, who serves as a test and reserve driver for the Mercedes Formula 1 team and is formerly a member of the McLaren young drivers’ programme, said that the renewed speculation is a revelation to him.
“These rumours are new to me,” he told GP Fans.
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“I have no idea where you read them [the rumours] or where you came across them. But then I’m very curious where they got that from, because honestly, I have no idea.”
He maintained that the pinnacle of motorsport is where he wants to end up, but insists that his focus is on the current Formula E season with Mercedes.
“Of course Formula 1 is a dream,” he explained.
“That is a dream for every young driver, but otherwise I think it is still quite early in the season. We are only at the sixth race in our championship.”
De Vries sits eighth in the Drivers’ Championship after a difficult string of results since his victory at the first round of the season in Saudi Arabia.