Nyck De Vries: "Returning to WEC is special!"
Nyck de Vries has settled in to life as a Toyota driver seamlessly as he gets set to join Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi in the No.7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid Hypercar for the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship season.
De Vries has replaced LMGT3 Lexus bound Jose-Maria Lopez and returns to the WEC for the first time since a memorable super-sub performance for TDS Racing at Le Mans in 2022.
“Returning to the WEC feels very special and I'm honestly super happy to be here at Toyota Gazoo Racing and I'm really enjoying it so far,” said the Dutch ace.
De Vries’ first test for the team came at the end of 2019 in the post-season Bahrain rookie test. From then de Vries’ career has taken in Formula E, where he was champion in 2021 and then a brief stint in Formula One with the Williams and Alpha Tauri squads.
He worked with Toyota extensively as a reserve driver from 2020 onwards but added that he feels as though he’s been “part of the team and the environment for a long time.”
“It’s great to be racing alongside such great experience and I remember watching Kamui in F1 and Mike in Indycar. Actually, my sister was a big fan of Kamui, she even had like a T shirt of him!
“It's just nice to hear their knowledge, their stories of racing and their whole experience. It's strange to think that I'm the youngest one in the team, all of them has got wives and kids which is cool to know about their lives out of racing too.”
De Vries’ endurance story began at the 2018 WEC 6 Hours of Silverstone with the Racing Team Nederland operation in LMP2. After several races in WEC and ELMS, a big milestone came at the 2022 Le Mans 24 Hours when he was a late entry in the TDS LMP2 team with Mathias Beche and Tijen van der Helm.
An epic drive to fourth place in that race cemented his standing as one of the biggest potential next superstars of Hypercar, and it was only his brilliant Italian Grand Prix performance in September of that year that held up what felt like an inevitable race seat at Toyota.
“I think the beauty of endurance racing is the team spirit and the team dynamic is even more emphasised and important,” added de Vries. "We are very aware of the increased competitiveness and competition, and we embrace that because that's what we love.”
