Nyck de Vries' disappointing results with AlphaTauri so far this season and a recent visit to Faenza by Daniel Ricciardo have led to speculation that the latter could be set to replace the Dutchman.
Ricciardo - who is assuming a reserve role with Red Bull this year and who will enjoy an outing with the team at a Pirelli tyre test in July at Silverstone - recently visited the AlphaTauri factory where he underwent a seat fitting.
The Aussie's presence in Faenza has fueled rumors regarding de Vries' future in light of his poor results.
But Ricciardo's seat fitting with the Italian outfit could also be construed as a mere necessity given that his reserve driver arrangements with Red Bull extend to AlphaTauri.
©RedBull
Theoretically, Ricciardo could be called up at short notice by either team should a driver become unavailable, hence AlphaTauri's seat fitting requirement.
Nevertheless, regardless of the hearsay, de Vries' track record year-to-date with AlphaTauri is a cause for concern.
The 28-year-old, who owed his belated entry into F1 to his remarkable one-off performance with Williams at Monza in 2022, has been consistently outpaced by teammate Yuki Tsunoda.
But several mistakes have also botched de Vries' copy. After finishing P14 in Bahrain and in Jeddah, he crashed out in Melbourne and in Baku.
And last weekend in Miami, he locked up at the first corner after the start and hit the rear of Lando Norris' McLaren, fortunately with little consequences for either driver.
In Azerbaijan last month, AlphaTauri team boss Franz Tost said that he considered the Dutchman's mishaps and subdued results as part of a F1 rookie's "learning process".
"As I always say, there is a learning process and a crash period because, if the drivers don't crash, they don't know the limit," he said, quoted by Motorsport.com.
"This is a credit you must give them, otherwise it doesn't work. And there was no driver not crashing. I remember with Sebastian [Vettel] in the first races, he came back on the first lap most often without the front nose. That's part of the game."
Nevertheless, Red Bull motorsport boss Helmut Marko will surely be attentive to de Vries' results in F1's upcoming Imola-Monaco-Barcelona triple header that will begin next week.
If no improvements are forthcoming for the Dutchman after the three races, there may well be a Honey Badger in the AlphaTauri garage come next month's Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, the scene by the way of Ricciardo's first career win in F1 in 2014.
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