A driver’s confidence is governed by their mindset and the car underneath them. Give them a race-winning car, the confidence soars. Give them a mediocre, unpredictable car and their head may drop.
“The mind is everything” explained Sir Jackie Stewart in a 2003 interview. “All the boys in Formula One today have gifts from God and there’s 20 of them. Then there’s the top six, then the extraordinary three. But the genius is the one who takes it to another level.” For those, Stewart believes, “it’s always the head that took them there.”
But what happens when that confidence drops? Four races into the 2022 season, a handful of drivers already appear to be in that position.
Nicholas Latifi has had a wretched start to 2022, coming off the back of a controversial end to last season.
The Williams driver attracted undue criticism over his crash which triggered the title-deciding Safety Car period in Abu Dhabi. Afterwards Latifi received a barrage of abuse, including death threats, leading him to issue a statement in which he admitted deleting social media apps from his phone as a result.
Latifi crashed twice in Jeddah“The ensuing hate, abuse, and threats on social media were not really a surprise to me as it’s just the stark reality of the world we live in right now,” said Latifi. “I’m no stranger to being talked about negatively online, I think every sportsperson who competes on the world stage knows they’re under extreme scrutiny and this comes with the territory sometimes.
“But as we’ve seen time and time again, across all different sports, it only takes one incident at the wrong time to have things completely blown out of proportion and bring out the worst in people who are so-called ‘fans’ of the sport. What shocked me was the extreme tone of the hate, abuse, and even the death threats I received.”
Four races into the new season, Latifi is sitting at the bottom of the standings. He has had a series of crashes: One during qualifying…