Latifi enjoys 'special' home crowd and little else on the way to P16 in maiden Canadian Grand Prix

Nicholas Latifi gave a frank assessment of his performance in his first-ever home Grand Prix after the Canadian finished 16th at Montreal – despite the crowd spurring him on.

The Torontonian donning #6 couldn’t find those extra few tenths from a “special” home crowd, finishing 16th ahead of Haas’s Kevin Magnussen. Apart from the packed grandstands, Latifi couldn’t find much else to smile about on Sunday.

“I mean obviously the overall experience of the weekend has been pretty special; it’s great to finally have that first home race and the support I felt – family, friends, all the fans in the grandstands – has been amazing.

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“In terms of the actual on-track stuff, there was nothing really enjoyable about the race. We were just lacking a lot of pace. We have to try and understand why, because at the moment there’s no answers.

“Low fuel, high fuel, the pace is just not there, so we have two weeks now to try and do a bit of analysis because it’s not just this race, it’s even from the previous ones. There’s something not quite right there. We’ll see what we can find.”

Team mate Alex Albon fared slightly better, qualifying 12th in the wet and finishing 13th. And the Thai driver said it became clear within the first laps of Sunday’s race that it would be a “difficult” afternoon for Williams.

“I think with the [Virtual Safety Cars] we just got a little bit out of sequence with bad timing and to be honest with you, we didn’t really have the pace today either,” said Albon. “I think P13 was realistically the best we could have done today. It’s one of those things.

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“I think this track, we knew it was going to be difficult going into it. Obviously, we had a good qualifying yesterday but in the first few laps you could tell it was going to be a tricky race [for us].

“I mean, I was hopeful, but on Friday we were already maybe half a second to a second slower than the next car – that’s not ideal. So, yes, I still think we could’ve most probably maximised the result a little bit better. I don’t know what we could’ve done but I’m sure we can have a look at it and see.”

Williams enter the British Grand Prix on three points, Albon having last scored for the team in Miami, as Latifi seeks a first top-10 finish of the season.