Williams driver Nicholas Latifi feels that his performances were closer to George Russell than most people claimed them to be.
Latifi and Russell spent two years together as teammates in Williams. During their time together, it was clear that Russell consistently outperformed the Canadian in all aspects.
Russell was particularly good at Qualifying, as we saw during the course of the 2021 season. He took his Williams into Q2 in most of the races, and also started on the front row in Belgium. His strong Qualifying performances earned him the nickname of ‘Mr. Saturday’.
However, Latifi feels that the gap between him and the Brit was made to look bigger than it actually was. He pointed out the fact that he would be knocked out of Q1 by the smallest of margins, whereas his teammate would scrape through to earn higher grid positions.
“Before the summer break a steady growth started, both on the qualifying performance front and in race management,” Latifi said to Motorsport.com.
“These are two completely different aspects. But each driver must be able to combine them very well in order to put together a good race weekend.”
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Williams never treated him and George Russell differently, says Nicholas Latifi
Latifi went on to say that the Williams team always saw the ‘bigger picture’ when it came to comparing him and Russell.
“Sometimes in my situation, it was frustrating to find myself out of Q2 by a very small margin.” said the 26-year-old.
“Sometimes I was really close to George. Then of course he would improve his time in Q2. And at the end of the race, his Q2 time would often be compared to my Q1 time, making it seem like a huge gap.”
“But it always comforted me to know that the team had the picture of everything. And obviously, I was very happy to see that before the summer break things improved. It continued in the right direction afterwards.”
“I know I had one of the fastest drivers on the grid as a teammate, I think that will be even more clear to everyone next season.”
George Russell took part in his last race of Williams at the Abu Dhabi GP in 2021. He is set to partner Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes, next season onwards.
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