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Last season de Vries sampled the 2022 Williams, Mercedes and Aston Martin cars, and also completed some laps in a 2021 Alpine.
Tost says that the Dutchman’s recent F1 mileage as well, as the overall experience that he has gained in other categories, enabled him to offer useful feedback when he tried the AlphaTauri at the Abu Dhabi test in November, in effect alerting the team to some of the shortcomings of the AT03.
“Nyck de Vries is doing a really good job,” said Tost. “He is very experienced, you can see and feel that he is 28 years old, and that he won a lot of races and championships.
“And I think that he will be able to adapt to F1 immediately. I expect him to perform well from the first qualifying onwards.
“Of course, always when a new driver is coming, if it’s not a young driver coming from a lower series, he brings in some input, some technical ideas. And with Nyck we were lucky that last year he was in contact with many teams and many cars.
“And I think that our engineers got good technical feedback from his side, especially after the Abu Dhabi test where he did a lot …