Nicholas Latifi concluded his final Qualifying session with the Williams Racing team on Saturday, and the Canadian was ‘pretty happy’ with his lap despite ending the day as the slowest qualifier at the Yas Marina Circuit.
Latifi will leave Williams after three years after Sunday’s race, and although he did not complete the perfect lap on Saturday, he was still content with his session, ending just 0.024 seconds behind team-mate Alexander Albon.
Despite his future beyond 2022 being unclear, Latifi will be looking to enjoy his final event, even if it is likely to be difficult to contend for a top ten finish.
“I’m pretty happy with the last lap in Qualifying,” said Latifi. “It wasn’t the perfect lap, but it was clean. We just didn’t have the pace today.
“I made sure to use all the tyres I had and left nothing on the rack. It’s not where I want to be in my last Qualifying session, but I’m satisfied. I think the main difficulty was trying to find the right space for the outlaps.
“Tomorrow will be difficult but it’s my last race and I’ll be trying to enjoy it as much as possible.”
“I overtook seven or eight cars on the outlap and I was still not ready for Turn 1” – Alexander Albon
Team-mate Albon had been hopeful of getting into Q2 but traffic building up to his lap prevented him from getting his tyres in the right operating window, and he was unfortunate to end only nineteenth on the grid.
Despite overtaking a lot of cars on the way to the start of his flying lap, Albon was still unable to get his tyres in the right window until around turn six, but by then it was too late to get a competitive lap time in.
“After FP3 we were feeling confident and the car was looking good, however as the track temperature drops down, outlaps need to be faster to compensate for the drop and we were in a lot of traffic and not able to get a clear outlap,” said Albon.
“I overtook seven or eight cars on the outlap and I was still not ready for Turn 1, however after Turn 6 I was happy with my lap but I lost so much time in the first half trying to get the tyres up to temperature and it wasn’t enough when the margins are so small but I think we would’ve got into Q2 had it not been for that.
“Fortunately, it’s not a situation where we’re scratching our heads wondering why there’s no grip, it’s more that we didn’t really have the chance to do what we needed to. When we’re in traffic it makes it complicated so it’s a bit frustrating but we’ll look to tomorrow.”
Alexander Albon will start nineteenth in Abu Dhabi – Credit: Williams Racing