Latifi was one of the great protagonists of the Great Britain classification, where Carlos Sainz achieved his first pole position in F1. The Canadian, after a difficult start to the season, managed to qualify for Q3 for the first time, where he qualified tenth.
He had already started from that position in Belgium 2021 , although on that occasion it was due to a five-place penalty for Valtteri Bottas and Lando Norris. That Sunday, which the fans will not forget because they lived through a complete farce of a two-lap race and without being able to overtake, the youngster also took advantage of Sergio Pérez’s abandonment on the way to the grid to be ninth and score points, something he has only achieved twice .
Many expected that Nicholas Latifi would give the bell and also score points in this British GP, but despite retirements and various problems, he could only be twelfth.
With Zhou’s brutal crash at the start, caused by Russell, Latifi gained two places and started eighth in the second start after a red flag, and managed to stay in the points zone by running close to other cars. A mirage.
“Throughout the whole first stint I was in points positions. I could feel like I was stuck in a group of cars that were much faster than me and that I was just on that little train because the DRS was keeping me there,” he admitted. “So it was good to get those competitive feelings back again.”
However, when it was time to stop, Latifi found that there was indeed not enough pace in that Williams for an optimal result.
“I said to myself ‘just try to hold on as long as you can’. I was pushing absolutely flat out, not managing. Then you just succumb to the natural rhythm of the car once the cars are separated and the line is stretched out, with no option to DRS”.
He faced reality: “And the reality is that I’m still in the 10th car, the slowest on the grid, and it’s a shame. Even with the tire advantage compared to Magnussen at the end, we were missing a lot of downforce. E even in the high-speed corners it was tearing me apart despite having new soft tyres.
Latifi admits he wasn’t expecting to score points either, but was hoping to stay out of trouble and wait: “It was frustrating not being able to fight a bit more, but before the race did you expect to score points? Realistically, no. But you’re in those positions for quite a while, You see a dropout here, another dropout there, and you hope you can stay in that group. But it wasn’t going to be this time.”
In addition, the Williams revealed a problem that conditioned him during the race at Silverstone, one of the worst possible circuits to suffer something like this. “We had to manage some other things. We were low on fuel for the race and I had to save a lot of fuel, and this is the track you least want to do it on, it’s the one that penalizes you the most in terms of tire temperatures. But regardless of that I just had no rhythm.”
Latifi narrated the disappointing feeling of going as fast as possible and that speed is not enough.
“I felt fast, I was fast, and this is a track where everything is on the edge with the wind. We were going slow, but the feeling I had with the car was that I felt absolutely as flat as I could. way that I don’t think I would have been able to do at the beginning of the year. So overall, I felt much better.”
“Was he hoping to be fast enough to finish in the points? No, so there are some things to look into.”
Finally, he talked about the chassis he used this weekend: “There were some changes, we changed the chassis this weekend, I changed to a different one than I’ve had all year. So we have to see what we want to do about it in the future”.
“I mean, there were some positive things, not that it’s necessarily revolutionary in terms of sheer pace.”
