On Christmas Day 2020, a special gift from his son awaited Hendrik de Vries, a Renault dealership owner and an amateur racing driver from the Netherlands. Nyck, who shares his father’s passion for racing, had realised one of his lifelong dreams just a couple of weeks before the holidays, by taking part in official Formula 1 testing for young drivers – and in title-winning machinery, too. Nyck made sure his dad would have something to remember a day that was so special for both of them.
“After my first season in Formula E I got given the rookie test with Mercedes for the first time, and I was super-excited and happy… because I thought I was never going to drive a Formula 1 car,” recalls the man who will be one of the 20 full-time drivers on the grid of the world’s main racing championship next year. “I was super happy. And I have a very emotional relationship with my dad and my family, so for Christmas I gave him a picture from that Abu Dhabi test, when I first drove a Formula 1 car, and I wrote some things on the back. It basically said that ‘after so many years we finally drove one!’ And I remember we all cried.”
Nyck was already almost 26 at that point. He’d had a junior career full of successes but not exactly spectacular. He won two Formula
