Nyck de Vries makes a habit of it....of course his race debut at Monza is well known, but lets not forget he practiced on Friday for Aston Martin F1 so was at the track the following day. Suddenly prior to P3 Albon was hit with Appendicitis requiring immediate surgery. Nyck found himself in the Williams for P3 and the rest of the weekend.
However at Le Mans earlier this year he was present basically reserve for the Toyota Hypercar team, pretty much a coffee making role, when ACO officials prohibited TDS Racing x Vaillante LMP2 driver Philippe Cimadomo to start the race. Cimadomo was excluded from the running of the French classic on Thursday evening by stewards after being involved in three separate incidents in practice.. De Vries was there on the spot at Le Mans got into the car vacated by Cimadomo.
This next one is probably stretching the rules a bit but should be mentioned just for the hell of it.
Hans Heyer at the 1977 German GP.
Hans had never entered a GP before, being more of a European Touring car driver. (I think he was ETCC and German Touring Car Champion. He had never AFAIK even tested an F1 car although he had tried an F2 car. Anyway Heyer decided to enter the GP ( Icant remember if he bought the drive or had a sponsor for the day and I am going from memory....
@Michael Ferner being a local lad at the time will I am sure know the details better than I can recall. I recall it was the German ATS team (the remnants of Penske). I do know that usually they entered just Jarier but for Germany Heyer joined Jarier in a second car. The car was not a good car for sure
Anyway Hans practiced, but failed to qualify for the race. It was in the days when more cars would turn up and have to qualify for the 24 spots on the grid. He failed to qualify and was thus relegated to 3rd reserve. He would be allowed to start if a few cars failed on their way to the start.
Hans, being a local knew all the officials and marshalls very well, so he lined ready to start if others failed. No one stopped him so Heyer joined the back of the grid. As it happens the starting lights were not working so a flag was used to start the race. There was quite a lot of confusion and bumping, a couple of cars got together. Anyway in all the confusion Heyer just joined the race even though he was not meant to do so. His marshal mates certainly didnt stop him. He ran round for a number of laps before his gearbox linkage failed.
It was only after he had stopped that race officials were even aware he had started the race unofficially. So they promptly disqualified the already stopped Heyer. He never got a black DSQ flag though as he had already stopped before they realised.
His antics do give him the unique record of being the only F1 driver to be credited with a DNQ (did not qualify),a DNF (did not finish), and a DSQ in the same race,
Hans Heyerat Hockenheim for the 1977 Geman GP in the ATS
I have a feeling that a few years before at the1974 US GP Tim Schenken decided to take the start despite failing to qualify .... unlike Heyer the officials noticed the extra car and he was black flagged and disqualified.
