Latifi admits to ‘real difficult start’ to his season

With three crashes already this season, Nicholas Latifi admits it has been a “difficult start” to his 2022 championship.

Scoring his first F1 World Championship points last season, a year in which he seemingly closed the gap on his much-lauded team-mate George Russell, Latifi was backed to continue his progression as a driver this season.

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There has been no sign of that as yet.

The Canadian has yet to make it out of Q1 on a Saturday and has in fact not lined up higher than P18 so far this season.

His efforts haven’t been helped by a spate of crashes, the driver twice into the barriers at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and then again in qualifying for the Australian race.

RED FLAG

Latifi and Stroll collide in the first sector and both are out of qualifying#AusGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/lhb5OHUKM7

— Formula 1 (@F1) April 9, 2022

The latter meant he lined up P18, two places ahead of his team-mate Alex Albon, who had been disqualified from the session.

But while Albon ran an impressively long first stint on the hard tyres, only pitting on the penultimate lap, to score the team’s first point of the season, Latifi started third last and finished second last.

“It was great to see Alex finish in P10 in the end, which I also kind of saw at the end, looking at the TV after the chequered flag and saw he was there,” Latifi told