De Vries still ignoring F1 axe rumours

Nyck de Vries says he is still ignoring the media coverage of his precarious situation in Formula 1 at present.

Red Bull’s Dr Helmut Marko has hinted that the struggling Alpha Tauri rookie may be ousted sooner or later - but de Vries, 28, says he has been switching off since Austria rather than worrying.

"A game of golf works wonders," he said.

"I don’t care about the speculation, but that doesn’t matter.

"But the wind changes so quickly in F1 that it makes no sense at all to read any of it," de Vries added. "I am only concerned with showing the best version of myself and I have not succeeded enough in that this season.

"But what someone says today or tomorrow may be different the day after tomorrow. I can’t let that guide me, because then I would be on a rollercoaster all the time.

"After the first few races this year I realised that reading all that stuff won’t do me any good. There is too little nuance."

Indeed, de Vries says that unlike other situations with struggling drivers in the past, he is not as far behind as the headlines might suggest.

"If you look at the minimal gaps last weekend in Austria, I think that has been rarely seen in Formula 1," he said at Silverstone.