Latifi wants Williams to judge 2023 seat since British GP chassis change

The Canadian driver has been outperformed by new teammate Alex Albon so far this season, with the Anglo-Thai driver 11-2 up on their qualifying head-to-head and 10-3 in front on their race head-to-head while he has also scored all of the team’s points.

Latifi appeared to struggle to adapt to the new F1 cars and rules this year, but since a chassis change at the Silverstone round plus receiving updates at the most recent races he’s made improvements – highlighted by making Q3 of qualifying at the British GP.

As a result, the 27-year-old wants Williams to assess him from the last four rounds before the summer break as it weighs up its 2023 driver line-up options, having already secured Albon on a multi-year deal. 

“Now that I do feel much more comfortable in the position I’m in with showing up the weekends knowing that, okay, if I drive the way I know I can drive and get as much as I can out of the car, then the performance is where it needs to be, which I think is deserving of staying in F1,” Latifi told Autosport.

“Whereas obviously at the beginning of the year that wasn’t the case. I’ve made my position clear that you can’t deny the past races, what’s the change in performance, and I’ve put more pressure on myself now, because performance is there now [for the team to assess] me from now onwards.

“So I’m putting more pressure on myself, but the pressure is always going to be there. And so I know I can and I feel I can deliver, and for me, I showed that to myself the past few races. So yeah, pressure’s on me now. But that’s F1, right?”

Latifi felt he had made “no progress” with Williams before the car changes ahead of the British GP and didn’t feel comfortable in the FW44, leading to him being “extremely demoralised” after his home race in Montreal.

“Leaving Montreal, I felt there was no progress from either, basically on anything,” he said.

“Understanding as to why the pace was always so slow, I left Montreal, just as puzzled and confused, frustrated. Australia probably was a tricky one, because let’s say the struggles weren’t as outwardly evident until two crashes I had in Saudi. There was no clear improvement at all, or no clear path to improvement.

“We changed the chassis for Silverstone just to rule that out. Since then, the performance has been there.

“And again, I’m not, let’s say 100% saying the chassis was something wrong with it, I’m 99.9% convinced that there was something…