Race engineer Latifi on how they earned the points

The Japanese Grand Prix was Nicolas Latifi’s best race of the season as he scored a few points for 9th place at Suzuka last Sunday. It is the Canadian’s first high score this year, and while he says it won’t affect his future and help him stay in Formula 1, Latifi’s performance made a big impression on the Williams team.

“This was made possible by a combination of factors,” said Nicolás race engineer Ernesto Desiderius. – It all started with teamwork in Friday practice, when we thought that heavy rain wouldn’t allow us to go to the track.

We knew it was going to be a real downpour, but we saw some holes in the weather and were able to gain some experience riding both intermediate tires and heavy rain tires. I think it was fundamental to understand what the track’s condition was like.

But it was pouring heavily, whole streams flowed along the track, but the asphalt in Suzuka has very specific properties, it gives good grip even under such conditions. Good thing we found out on Friday, it has been an important addition to our information base.

In these pre-race conditions you can do something with the car, although not much. The regulations prescribe a number of points, there are eight or nine in total: for example you can make changes to the cooling system, including brake air ducts, you can change the angle of attack of the front wing. But in general, when preparing the machine for work in cold and wet weather, you should consider everything as a whole.

After Friday practice Nicholas had a clear idea of ​​what the track would look like on Sunday and this was a key moment as he understood the conditions under which it would be possible to switch to intermediate rubber.

We discussed everything in detail before the race restart, when it was stopped by red flags. He knew that with a certain change of conditions it would be possible to make a pit stop. So I repeat: this was the result of serious teamwork, which started on Friday, and on Sunday we put everything together.

When Nicholas drove behind the safety car, he saw it was time to change the tyres, thought the conditions already allowed it and made the right decision.

We have not discussed this extensively on the radio, so as not to share information with rivals about what we are going to do. We even thought more drivers would decide to make pit stops, but they didn’t.

At that time only us and Sebastian Vettel went to the pits. Even then we had a big smile on our face because we knew this would help us. In the pit lane Vettel was ahead of us, but it happens. Then, on the first lap of exiting the pits, it was difficult to attack because of the poor visibility.

Nevertheless, the team did a great job, through the earlier pit stop we managed to get a few cars ahead – I think seven or eight…”

It is worth recalling that Latifi started from 19th position, so finishing in the top ten, and even in such difficult circumstances, can really be considered a good achievement.