Nicholas Latifi reflects on 'tricky' Spanish GP and hopes heat can generate race opportunities

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Nicholas Latifi reflects on 'tricky' Spanish GP qualifying and hopes heat can generate race opportunities

By George Dagless

Published May 22, 2022

Williams driver Nicholas Latifi has said that he's hoping the heat in Barcelona will help him try to climb the classification this afternoon at the Spanish Grand Prix

Williams driver Nicholas Latifi has said that he's hoping the heat in Barcelona will help him try to climb the classification this afternoon at the Spanish Grand Prix.

The Canadian is set to line up on the grid in P19 for this afternoon's race.

He had qualified P20 but Fernando Alonso has since taken a power unit change, dropping him to last place.

For Latifi, though, it was a difficult afternoon on Saturday and he said that it's been a challenging weekend, though he's hopeful that expected high tyre degradation is going to present opportunities to climb the field:

"I think tomorrow will be a long afternoon for everyone," Latifi told Give Me Sport's George Dagless among the gathered press on Saturday after qualifying.

"It's going to be the hottest day tomorrow and there'll be big tyre degradation for everyone up and down the pitlane so if some teams get it wrong there's going to be a lot of opportunities.

"I think there are still reasons to remain optimistic for the race but it was a tricky day.

"I think it was probably the worst Friday I've had since being with the team. We made some quite sizeable changes with the car set-up and it was probably as far out of the window as it's ever been and I think overnight we made changes to go in the right direction, but we're still missing quite a lot of pace.

BARCELONA, SPAIN - MAY 21: Nicholas Latifi of Canada driving the (6) Williams FW44 Mercedes on track during qualifying ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Spain at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on May 21, 2022 in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo by Lars Baron/Getty Images)

"This is a track where you put a lot of downforce on the car, you don't really care as much about the straight-line speed, but we're one of the quickest in a straight-line and we're missing in the high-speed corners, we're lacking in this area for sure."

Both Williams cars are towards the back of the grid with Alex Albon just one spot in front of his team-mate, and so the team is going to obviously be hoping for things to fall their way in the race as they try to get near the top 10.