“Don’t get too stressed about it”: Max Verstappen shares words of wisdom for under-pressure Nyck de Vries

Red Bull driver and two-time world champion Max Verstappen had some encouraging words for his fellow Dutchman Nyck de Vries, who has been struggling in his debut season with AlphaTauri.

The former F2 champion has been in the firing line of Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko recently due to his poor performances with the team in 2023. De Vries is yet to score a point and has been largely behind his teammate Yuki Tsunoda, which has put his seat in F1 in danger.

During the pre-race press conference in Austria, Max Verstappen said:

"Don't get too stressed about it, but just work hard together with all the people involved who can actually make a difference and influence your performance. But I don't even need to tell Nyck, he knows that, he has a lot of experience.

"We'll see again this weekend, to be honest, and this is for everyone, of course, it's not only Nyck, everyone, every single weekend you have to work together with your engineers because again, we, like this year we have a very quick car but if I would just sit back and relax and think that everything will come to me then the results at one point will stop coming and you cannot let that happen."

Verstappen urged De Vries to perform to his potential

Max Verstappen showed confidence in his compatriot and urged him to continue performing to his best. He said:

"Well, I think we all know that this is motorsport in general, right? You need to perform to the best you can. It's not forever anyway but as Nyck said, you can't force things as well. So it's about how you work together with your team, gain more experience as well and at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what people above you say, it’s about how then you learn from your weekends, learn from your mistakes as we all do, and yeah, just get on top of the car a little bit more, feel a bit more comfortable and definitely don't force it.

"Just talk to engineers: what can we do better, what can be worked on? And then at one point, when these things click a little bit more, you can get these results and then if you have one good result maybe it leads to another one and then you feel a bit more comfortable anyway. So yeah, it's a lot of things that have to come together at the end of the day."

Hopefully, de Vries will follow Max Verstappen's advice and perform a bit better in Austria this weekend.