Nicholas Latifi thinks he’s now showing he’s ‘deserving of staying in F1’

Nicholas Latifi believes that now he has an upgraded Williams chassis, he is showing he deserves to stay for a fourth season in F1.

A perennial backmarker since being given his Williams chance in 2020, Latifi has scored points in only two of his 52 starts so far – at back-to-back races in Hungary and Belgium last year.

He has never had the car to greatly improve on that record, but was outperformed in 2020 and 2021 by George Russell and the same is happening this time around with his new team-mate Alex Albon.

All three of Williams’ points this term have been scored by Albon, with Latifi’s best finish being 12th in the British Grand Prix.

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However, the Canadian senses improvement since the FW44 has been upgraded and can point to setting the quickest time in FP3 on a drying track and a fastest sector in Q1, both at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Although many pundits feel the 27-year-old’s time in F1 is drawing to a close due to his lack of achievement, the driver himself does not see it that way.

“I feel much more comfortable in the position I’m in, showing up at the weekends knowing, okay, if I drive the way I know I can drive and get as much as I can out of the car, then the performance is where it needs to be – which I think is deserving of staying in F1,” Latifi told Motorsport.com.

“Whereas obviously at the beginning of the year that wasn’t the case. I’ve made my position clear that you can’t deny the past races.

“I’ve put more pressure on myself now because performance is there now [for the team] to assess me from now onwards.

“So I’m putting more pressure on myself, but the pressure will always be there. And so I know I can, and feel I can, deliver, and I showed that to myself the past few races. Pressure’s on me now but that’s F1, right?”

Does Nicholas Latifi deserve another year in F1?

Our opinion is that if it was ever going to happen for him, in terms of proving himself, it would have done so by now.

Williams, at the back of the pack for practically all of the last three years, are the ideal example of a constructor currently where the best benchmark for a driver to prove himself is his against his team-mate.

Latifi has not been able to match the pace of either Russell or Albon and, earlier this year when he was crashing the new car on a regular basis, including twice in Saudi Arabia, he frankly looked out of his depth.

“All you can do is focus on you. It definitely doesn’t help thinking about all the possible negative outcomes,” he said.

“In this sport, there are always so many things up in the air, a lot of it not even in your control, because they could also be dependent on another driver’s performance.

“All I can do is just focus on my performance now and show the team what I can do, that I want to stay here.

“Any driver would be lying if they said it doesn’t help to have security and assurance that your position is settled. But that will always come up every few years in Formula 1, even for the top drivers.”

Nine races left and if Latifi is not to surrender his place to someone like Nyck de Vries or Logan Sargeant, he needs to start performing on a par with Albon as a minimum requirement – and probably bag some points as well.