Williams’ engineer Dave Robson reveals the reasons for Nicholas Latifi’s struggles


Williams’ engineer Dave Robson reveals the reasons for Nicholas Latifi’s struggles

Williams principal engineer, Dave Robson highlighted the reasons for Latifi's struggles.

Nicholas Latifi has not had a particularly great season. He has yet to score a point for Williams this year. Moreover, he has been comprehensively outperformed by his teammate, Alex Albon. Albon has looked inspired after his return, and at many a time outperformed the car.

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Latifi, on the other hand, is one of two regular drivers that are yet to score a point this season – the other being Mick Schumacher. He has also crashed several times – similar to Schumacher. Latifi could not match George Russell when they were teammates, but that was rather expected. Russell was always thought to be Mercedes bound sooner or later.

Dave Robson, Williams’ F1 engineering chief has given a possible explanation for the Canadian’s struggles. According to him, the underperformance stems from the inferior car. The car is also lacking in downforce, according to Robson and Latifi.

“Generally, I think still he is just still lacking a bit of confidence and just tuning the set-up to the tyres at each circuit to give him the confidence he needs.”

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“I think it’s a bit of a shame [in Monaco qualifying], if he’d got a little bit more out of FP3 then I think Q1 would have been a lot better.”

Robson felt that Latifi was hampered by a lack of front-end in the car during qualifying in Monaco. With a better aerodynamic balance in the car, he felt that the Canadian would have had a much better weekend.

In Monaco, Nicholas Latifi was also involved in a bit of an incident with Carlos Sainz. Sainz felt that he was impeded on his out lap by Latifi, who didn’t let Sainz pass even after multiple blue flags.

Also Read: “That definitely would make the car faster,” Dave Robson provides information on the updates for the Williams FW44

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Latifi: Going to Barcelona highlighted our lack of downforce compared to other cars

Nicholas Latifi
Nicholas Latifi had a strange incident with the car during the rolling race start.

Robson feels that Latifi is finding it tough to find a satisfactory aerodynamic balance in a downforce-deficient car. The Williams engineering chief said:

“I think ultimately in qualifying, he just didn’t quite get the confidence to get enough front wing, so enough aero balance in the car. So I think that was probably what happened here.”

Nicholas Latifi added that the car has balance issues, and their weekend in Barcelona really brought them to the forefront. Barcelona is known as a track where drivers are rarely able to compensate for the faults in the car. Latifi finished 16th, and Albon finished 18th in the race.

“I think there’s some balance issues we would like to improve that are kind of just inherent with the car. But I think going to Barcelona, it highlighted just the lack of downforce we do have compared to other cars.”

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He added: “It’s a track where you normally put everything you have on it in terms of load. And we were just missing a lot in the high-speed corners, based on the GPS data. I think it gave us some good directions for the factory and for the longer-term development of the car.”

Williams would hope that Latifi is able to get a handle on the car and drive with more confidence. After a disappointing couple of weekends, it will be essential for the British team to regain some momentum in the next race in Baku.

Also Read: “I live in the present,” Nyck de Vries unperturbed with rumors of him replacing Nicholas Latifi next season

Also Read: Nicholas Latifi clears out ‘strange’ collision in the formation lap: “I did nothing wrong there”

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