28/10/2022
NEWS STORY
As his F1 career draws to a close, Williams driver, Nicholas Latifi has played down talk of a move to IndyCar.
Runner-up to Nyck de Vries in the 2019 F2 championship, the Canadian has never really proved his worth since making the step up to the pinnacle of motorsport. Indeed, as he prepares to make way for Logan Sargeant, Latifi's biggest legacy, as far as many are concerned, was his off in Abu Dhabi and the events that followed.
Since Williams confirmed that he was to be dropped at season end, the Canadian has given away little in terms of his plans for the future and as the Mexican Grand Prix weekend got underway he remained unwilling to give any hints.
Asked about claims that he has already signed a contract to race in IndyCar, he replied: "It's all just rumours.
"I haven't decided yet from my future," he continued. "Of course, I've been exploring options and IndyCar is a series I'm considering, for sure, but I've not decided on anything yet."
Asked if IndyCar is what he wants to do, he said: "The right opportunity in the right series which again, at this point of time, I can't say what the right series is because I haven't made up my mind yet.
"It's definitely still on the table," he added, "but at the same time, if there's not an option on the table that I feel is the right one for next year then I'm not necessarily ruling out taking a year to then put something better together for the following one."
Much like Mercedes, Williams form has tended to swing between specific circuits, but recently, again like Mercedes, there have been signs of promise.
"Last weekend was a tricky one," admits the Canadian. "I think, particularly on the option tyre we seemed more competitive and then once we put the prime tyre on, then we struggled a little bit more and just got caught up with... at the safety car restart, I was that first car when all the midfield cars started pitting, I'm that block in the road, let's say, and kind of getting caught up in battles that, let's say, for the sake of my own race was maybe not the best way to go about it. But obviously it was beneficial for the team to just put up as big a fight as possible and we almost got some points in the end with Alex.
"But coming into this weekend, I think, on paper, this is going to be a very difficult track for us. The only thing going for us this weekend here is the straight-line speed but again, we're fast in the straight because we don't make a lot of downforce, not because we are extremely efficient in a straight line, obviously the one thing you really need here is the downforce because the produces so little of it to begin with and whenever we've needed to put on maximum downforce this year we've struggled compared to our competitors. So even going off the experiences of last year which tend to be a good correlation of tracks, we were more competitive at last year versus this year and whatnot, and this one was a struggle.
"I guess the good thing is that that brings a kind of optimism for trying to do a bit of a better job as there is a lot of other factors here: reliability issues whether it's people managing PU tenths and what not, brake temperatures, so there's a lot of other things that even quicker cars can get wrong. So still, we've got to be there to take any opportunities that come."
Check out our Thursday gallery from Mexico City here.