“No Michael! No no Michael! That was so not right!” This phrase has been etched in the minds of F1 fans who watched the Abu Dhabi GP in 2021. Toto Wolff was irate, Christian Horner was jubilant. They were complete opposites. Abu Dhabi in 2021 was a night to remember. However, Nicholas Latifi has ended up being collateral damage.

Most parts of the race were led by Lewis Hamilton. Things changed drastically in Lap 54 when Nicholas Latifi crashed on Turn 14. A safety car was brought onboard. This followed a furiously contested Lap 58 where Max Verstappen emerged as a winner.

Latifi has had an extremely disappointing start to the 2022 season. He is under pressure from Nyck de Vries for his seat at Williams. Jost Capito, team principal at Williams, believes the social media outrage he suffered is one of the main reasons for it. 

Speaking to The High Performance Podcast he said, “It was extremely hard [when asked how hard it was for Latifi]. I think that’s hard for absolutely everybody. And I think everybody who didn’t go through this has no idea how that feels… And I think that was also a part why it took him quite a while in the season to find his competitiveness…I’m sure it affected his driving after that…”

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It was a very difficult time for Latifi and the Williams team as well. Sometimes fans do tend to forget the person they are targeting is a human being too. They forget what impact they can cause on their mental well-being.

Nicholas Latifi’s nightmare ending to 2021

Fans are deeply invested in their teams. They celebrate victories and mourn losses as if they have personal stakes in them. It was obvious that in a controversial season with an even more controversial ending, fans were going to be polarized. 

Latifi had a crash. Verstappen took advantage of the circumstances that existed. The two incidents should not be equated. It is wrong to blame Latifi for it.

As Capito says “The crash is, of course it’s (sic) shouldn’t have happened, but if you’re racing, you know, crash can happen.” On the same podcast, he narrated the storm Latifi had to weather, “You know, he was getting death threats. He was across all social media, horrible comments coming his way.”

He talked about how the Williams team had to keep assuring Latifi that he had made no mistake. Williams gave Latifi unwavering support and backing. He did switch off his social media accounts to stay away from the abuse, but that only provided limited respite.

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Drivers should not be blamed or harassed for things like these in F1. There are good days and bad days, and at the end of the day, they are human beings.