ROKiT Williams' Nicholas Latifi set to join online racing


By Andrew Hooper
March 21 2020

With the 2020 Formula One season coming to a halt with first the cancellation of the Chinese GP followed by a series of cancellations and postponements as a result of the worldwide outbreak of the Coronavirus Formula One drivers have been looking for alternatives to not been able to actually race. One such alternative has been the world of online racing and for ROKiT Williams driver Nichola Latifi there has been an area where he has joined in F1's Virtual Racing Series.

 
 ROKiT Williams' Nicholas Latifi set to join virtual racing world
 
Latifi
 

With the 2020 Formula One season coming to a halt with first the cancellation of the Chinese Grand Prix followed by a series of cancellations and postponements as a result of the worldwide outbreak of the Coronavirus Formula One drivers have been looking for alternatives to not been able to actually race. One such alternative has been the world of online racing.

One of these drivers happens to be ROKiT Williams driver Nicholas Latifi will join several other drivers in making his online F1 debut when he takes part in F1's online Bahrain Grand Prix.

As an alternative to the drivers as well as fans Formula 1 announced that it would be holding an Esports Virtual Grand Prix Series. This will see a selection of regular F1 drivers and guests race in online events that will help fill the gap resulting from cancelled and postponed races. Latifi announced that he was to join the series with a message on his Twitter account.

Since the cancellation of the Australian Grand Prix Nicholas has retuned back to his home city of Toronto in Canada. He has spoken of his isolation since leaving Australia by saying: "I wasn’t expecting to be sat in Toronto at this stage of the season but, as we all know, the situation with coronavirus has forced a few plans to be changed.

"The positive is I’m now spending some time with my family at home. I left Australia after the GP was postponed and flew east back to Canada. I think I’ve pretty much flown full circle around the world since I took off from London to travel to Melbourne!

"As with the rest of the people in the F1 paddock, I’m currently self-isolating and doing my bit to limit the spread of the virus. My family are doing the same also."

As for his involvement in the online series Nicholas spoke of how it is important for him to keep active and this will be one activity in which he does so having to practice in an online environment as well as the racing itself.

Nicholas added: "It’s important to keep busy in this situation, so I’ve been making the most of the opportunity to do lots of training in my gym, watching movies and doing some home gaming.

"I have a sim station at home in Canada that my younger brother’s been kindly keeping warm for me while I’m in Europe.

"I’ve been working to get that properly set up so I can hopefully take part in some of the upcoming ESports races. I’ll probably get my butt kicked, but it should be a lot of fun."
 

ROKiT Williams' Nicholas Latifi set to join online racing
Posted by: Williams F1 (IP Logged)
Date: 21/03/2020 08:26

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2020:03:21:08:29:17 by Andrew Hooper.

Re: ROKiT Williams' Nicholas Latifi set to join online racing
Posted by: SydneyF1Fan (IP Logged)
Date: 23/03/2020 12:08

Don't believe Latifi made it onto the grid, but the race was surprisingly entertaining with Herbert, Lando and the Hulk in some great dices.

[www.formula1.com]

The race was a bit disorganised with Lando unable to make qualifying due to tech glitches and supposedly having his car driven by AI for half of the race for the same reason. But it was great to see some real F1 drivers showing some nice moves on a sim game. Gives me some motivation to get practicing on the F1 game on my Xbox!

It would be good to see a few more F1 drivers from different generations in the next online race for Melbourne.

http://i807.photobucket.com/albums/yy358/SydneyF1Fan/SydneyF1FanSignatureWinner-v3.gif

Re: ROKiT Williams' Nicholas Latifi set to join online racing
Posted by: tomazy (IP Logged)
Date: 23/03/2020 16:12

Latifi was in the race, and he was among the fastest F1 drivers. he was 4th after the first couple of corners, and then Vandoorne crashed in to him. He had to pit at the end of lap 1, then he climed throu the order to finish 6th.

Re: ROKiT Williams' Nicholas Latifi set to join online racing
Posted by: Damon96 (IP Logged)
Date: 23/03/2020 18:34

Have to say, after watching some of the GT Sport FIA events, this was pretty poor I thought. Maybe it was the issue with people taking part all over the world and then trying to restream that footage but it didn't seem great quality in terms of footage or smoothness. The start was different, they could do with half the field not getting taken out, although fair play to JH for just straight lining the first corner, probably the best tactic in the end.

Re: ROKiT Williams' Nicholas Latifi set to join online racing
Posted by: Mehryar (IP Logged)
Date: 23/03/2020 20:10

I've been into sim racing for some years with rfactor 1&2.
There are some very good racers out there who know how to drive a clean race.What you see as a carnage at start or those stupid crashes were made mostly by real life racers infact.They're new to this thing I think.
It will get better with more practice from them as it takes time to get used to the engine of each simulator.

Btw, too bad it's done with F1-2019.Some of the things you see happening is because of the not very realistic sim engine of this platform.Rfactor offers a way more realistic platform and thus less stupid happening on the track.

http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/1095/mehryarsigyo7.gif

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