Nyck de Vries has already provided the AlphaTauri engineers with a "wake up call" after completing his first laps with the team at Abu Dhabi. The Dutchman completed several laps in their 2022 car at the post-season test, which enabled him to provide feedback on their development for the AT03. Team Principal Franz Tost said De Vries "complained a lot about the car" after running in the car, but provided enough technical feedback for the engineers to work from. "I think that our engineers got good technical feedback from his side, especially after the Abu Dhabi test where he did a lot of laps and where he fortunately complained a lot about the car," he told media, including RacingNews365.com . "This was a wake up call for the engineers, and I hope that we can provide him with a car which performs in the way he likes." De Vries was also in the unique scenario of having driven with three other teams; Aston Martin, Mercedes, and Williams, throughout 2022. This experience enabled him to come into the team with "technical ideas" according to Tost. "Always when a new driver is coming [into the team], if it's not a young driver coming from a lower series, he brings in some input and some technical ideas. "With Nyck, we were lucky that last year he was in contact with many teams, many cars."
Tost: I expect De Vries to perform well from first qualifying onwards
AlphaTauri has been clear with what their expectations are from De Vries , and Tost believes that he will be able to perform well out of the box from his first qualifying session. He added: "De Vries is doing a really good job. He is very experienced, you can you can see that and feel that he is 28 years old, that he won a lot of races and championships. "I think that he will be able to adapt in Formula One immediately. I expect him to perform well from the first qualifying onwards."
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