After serving as a test driver for Mercedes, McLaren, Aston Martin and Williams – making his F1 grand prix debut with Williams at Monza in 2022 – De Vries secured his first full-time F1 seat with Red Bull’s second team in 2023, but he lasted just 10 races before being axed from the Red Bull programme with Daniel Ricciardo taking his seat.
However, just a year on from his brutal exit, De Vries was surprisingly back behind the wheel of an F1 car with McLaren, with images emerging on social media showing him manning McLaren’s 2022 challenger, the MCL36, at Circuit Paul Ricard, the former home of Formula 1’s French Grand Prix.
McLaren’s Lando Norris emerged as a serious threat to Verstappen in the F1 2024 title race, Verstappen withstanding the Brit’s charge to secure a fourth successive title with two rounds to spare, but McLaren succeeded in knocking Red Bull off their Constructors’ Championship perch, Red Bull falling to a P3 finish behind Ferrari.
And with fellow Dutchmen Verstappen and De Vries on good terms – Verstappen recently naming De Vries in his dream line-up if he were to take on the Le Mans 24 Hours – Verstappen joked that the 29-year-old will bring him fully up to speed on all the juicy details at McLaren.
“He will send me a full report of what is going on!” Verstappen quipped to RacingNews365.com.
However, Verstappen did quickly make it abundantly clear that he is not about to actually receive any confidential McLaren data.
“No, of course not,” he stressed. “We always keep it very professional. That’s his job.
“I’m not there to try and steal information. I don’t want to put him in that position anyway.”
Nonetheless, Verstappen did have his suspicions in F1 2024 that a rival had been bending the rules, to the detriment of Red Bull.
The flexi-wing saga returned for its latest instalment last season, with governing body the FIA introducing a technical directive at the Belgian Grand Prix over the belief that teams had been exploiting that grey area, while the technical regulations have been tweaked for F1 2025 to avoid a repeat of McLaren’s ‘mini-DRS’ rear wing solution.
“Things happened in the background that meant we had no chance at all in certain races.
I know that for sure, but no one will ever admit that,” Verstappen told Dutch publication De Telegraaf.
Having matched Sebastian Vettel’s achievement of winning four Drivers’ titles in a row as a Red Bull driver, Verstappen goes into F1 2025 looking to set a new benchmark for Red Bull success by becoming a five-time World Champion.
