Born in 1995, Nicholas Latifi is the son of Canadian businessman Michael Latifi – CEO of Sofina Foods and major investor in the McLaren Formula 1 team.
Latifi began karting in 2009 before graduating to cars with a move to the 2012 Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge, a support series to the American Grand-Am series, where he drove a Ford Mustang.
The same year he launched his single seater career with a full campaign in the Italian F3 series running in parallel with his road racing endeavours.
Driving for BVM and JD motorsport Latifi took a handful of podium finishes, and his first single seater win en route to seventh overall in the championship standings.
Remaining in F3 for 2013, he raced in several series including British and European F3, and the annual Masters of F3 all with Carlin Motorsport.
A seventh place in the masters of F3 behind Felix Rosenqvist and Alex Lynn, and a handful of top six finishes elsewhere was his reward.
A limited Formula Renault 3.5 campaign in 2014 that culminated in a second place at Jerez in the final round alongside a single GP2 outing in Abu Dhabi convinced him to embark on a full season in FR 3.5 in 2015, where he finished eleventh.
Keen to continue his progression towards Formula 1, Latifi again joined GP2 for a handful of outings, but struggled to trouble the top ten and finished the season pointless.
However, it was enough for Renault to announce Latifi as their test driver for the 2016 Formula 1 season, a season that yielded his first podium in GP2 with DAMS.
Reprising his role as test driver for Renault in 2017, a second full-time season in F2 (formerly GP2) gave Latifi his first win in the series, on his way to fifth in the championship – enough to earn him a seat at Force India/Racing Point as reserve driver for 2018.
Another solitary win for DAMS in F2 in 2018 contributed to an improved offer from the Williams F1 team that would allow him a number of FP1 outings the following year, which would coincide with his best F2 season to date when he scored four wins & looked like a real title contender.
On 28th November it was announced that Nicholas Latifi would be a full time Formula 1 driver for Rokit Williams Racing in 2020 alongside George Russell.
0 Comments