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Red Bull's sudden firing of Nyck de Vries and replacing him with Daniel Ricciardo is not the first case of a driver not even lasting a season with the team. The Austrian unit is a group run on results, and when they don't match the expectations, you see this happening far too often.
We've seen experienced and proven talents get the boot in the past as well, and sometimes we've seen drivers parachuted from other series lose out far too early.
When we talk about Nyck de Vries, he falls in the category of drivers that faced the boot in the middle of a season and almost left fans thinking that it was a bit unfair what happened to them.
Has this happened before? Unfortunately, yes. This is not the first time a driver could not convince the Red Bull brass enough to keep him even for the entirety of the season.
Who are the other drivers that were shown the door by the team during an F1 season? Let's take a look.
#1 Danil Kvyat
Arguably the biggest shocker in F1 at the time was Danil Kvyat getting the shaft after an impressive first season with the team.
The driver was promoted to the senior team after just one season with Toro Rosso. In his first season with the team, Kvyat was very impressive and managed to even outscore Daniel Ricciardo in the other car.
However, with Max Verstappen's rise leaving everyone in the paddock impressed, the team was under serious pressure of losing the new star to its rivals. After a couple of first-lap incidents from Kvyat and being labeled a 'Tornado' by Sebastian Vettel, the Russian driver was demoted to Toro Rosso ahead of the 2016 F1 Spanish GP.
Kvyat's career never recovered after that, as he could not capture his old form again. After a couple of stints with Toro Rosso, the driver slowly fell out of contention.
#2 Pierre Gasly
Pierre Gasly had a somewhat similar backstory to Danil Kvyat. The French driver impressed in his first year with Toro Rosso, and the sudden departure of Daniel Ricciardo from Red Bull gave him an early break.
At the time, Max Verstappen had started to take over the senior team. The mistakes were a thing of the past, and so were the rash incidents.
Verstappen was starting to become a more mature driver who knew what he needed from the car, and Red Bull was more than willing to give it to him. The victim of entering his pro-Max Verstappen environment became obvious within the first few races. Gasly, a driver that had been a winner all his career, was unable to keep up with Max.
The gaps were almost astounding as Verstappen was racking up podiums while Gasly was struggling to even generate good lap times. It all came to a head in the race in Austria, where both Verstappen and Gasly were next to each other on the first lap of the race, but the French driver ended up almost a lap behind his teammate by the time the chequered flag fell.
By the time the mid-season break came around, Pierre Gasly was out of his seat at Red Bull, getting replaced by another young driver in Alex Albon.
#3 Vitantonio Liuzzi
In a somewhat unconventional start to its F1 journey, Vitantonio Luizzi was one of the three Red Bull drivers in 2005, the team's very first season in the sport.
With David Coulthard supposed to be a permanent fixture, Christian Klien and Liuzzi were supposed to alternate amongst themselves as the teams' second driver that season.
Klien, an Austrian driver and someone who had been backed by Red Bull throughout his junior career got the first shot and performed well alongside Coulthard. As earlier stated, he was replaced by Liuzzi for four races before the Austrian made a return.
It was during this time that politics came into play, as once Liuzzi handed over the reins to Klien, he would not be seen again.
While in terms of performance, there was nothing to choose between the two drivers, what made the difference was the fact that some members of the team wanted to see the Austrian driver race for Red Bull.
