Nyck de Vries will make his FIA Formula 1 World Championship debut this weekend at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza in place of the unwell Alexander Albon.
Albon has appendicitis and has been forced to step down from his drive at Williams Racing, and the team have called upon the services of de Vries, the winner of the 2020-21 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, who also acts as Williams’ reserve driver.
It will not be the first time de Vries has driven the FW44, with the Dutchman having participated in free practice for the Spanish Grand Prix in May for the team, but he will have a big learning curve to come this weekend in Italy as he participates in final practice on Saturday morning before his first Qualifying session later in the day.
“Williams Racing can confirm that, after feeling unwell this morning and seeking medical advice from the FIA and local hospital, Alex Albon is now undergoing treatment for appendicitis,” read a statement from Williams.
“Following on from this, we can confirm that the team’s Reserve Driver Nyck de Vries will drive in place of Alex for the remainder of the Italian Grand Prix weekend.
“Alex is in good spirits and the team wishes him a speedy recovery.”
Earlier in the weekend at Monza, de Vries participated in free practice for the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team, replacing Sebastian Vettel. It was his third outing for the third different team in 2022, with the Dutchman also testing for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team in France.
De Vries said it was a challenging session for him on Friday as he had to learn the car and how to drive it around such a low-downforce circuit.
“Firstly, it was a real privilege to drive the AMR22 around Monza today,” said de Vries on Friday. “This is a very different circuit compared to the other venues where I have driven 2022 cars, so it was all very valuable information for me.
“It was extremely challenging because of the low-downforce set-up that we run here, which makes it difficult to compare to my previous FP1 sessions. We spent the first half of the session gathering aerodynamic data, before switching to the Soft tyres later on.
“The priority is to help the team prepare for the weekend and I think we made good progress with the work we completed.”
