{"id":15024,"date":"2023-07-18T14:15:58","date_gmt":"2023-07-18T18:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=15024"},"modified":"2023-07-18T14:15:58","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T18:15:58","slug":"nicholas-latifi-quits-motorsport-in-dramatic-career-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2023\/07\/18\/nicholas-latifi-quits-motorsport-in-dramatic-career-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicholas Latifi quits motorsport in dramatic career change"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Nicholas Latifi has announced he is stepping away from motorsport to pursue a different career path, in a life update <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NicholasLatifi\/status\/1681332676026826752\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">published on Twitter<\/a>.<\/h3>\n<p>The Canadian was last seen behind the wheel in Formula 1 for Williams Racing, parting ways with the British team at the end of the 2022 season.<\/p>\n<p>After taking some time off social media, the 28-year-old returned to declare he is pursuing an MBA (Master of Business Administration) degree at London Business School (LBS).<\/p>\n<h3>Latifi&#8217;s Career Change<\/h3>\n<p>Latifi hadn&#8217;t raced in the entirety of 2023 so far, following a difficult final year for Williams in which he scored just two points.<\/p>\n<p>Making his Formula 1 debut at the 2020 Austrian Grand Prix, Latifi competed for the nine-time constructors&#8217; champions for three seasons, scoring nine points before being <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2022\/10\/23\/sargeant-close-to-williams-seat-pending-super-licence\/\" target=\"_self\">replaced by American rookie, Logan Sargeant<\/a>, ahead of the 2023 season.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Life Update!<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to let everyone know what I\u2019ve been up to and what my plans are for the future. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/NJKHISrtgd\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/NJKHISrtgd<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Nicholas Latifi (@NicholasLatifi) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NicholasLatifi\/status\/1681332676026826752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 18, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The update, posted to Twitter, confirms it was intentional to have a break from racing this year:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I decided very early on in the year that I wouldn&#8217;t have any racing plans for 2023.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It definitely felt very strange not having the same routine I&#8217;d been in for over half my life. Knowing that I wouldn&#8217;t be behind the wheel of a race car this year, I had obviously begun to think of what could be next for me.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Montreal-born Latifi acknowledges that a move to another category of motorsport would have been the natural move, however, he has decided to prepare for life for his post-racing future.<\/p>\n<p>On his decision to focus on business, the driver with 61 Grand Prix starts added:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Growing up, I always had a keen interest in the world of business, and I always say it was something I would have studied at university, had I not gone into racing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;With that in mind, and knowing I might be taking a break from racing, I decided I wanted to pursue an MBA degree and focus on something that would transform the next phase of my life.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The decision may seen surprising to a lot of people. However, I always knew there would be a life post-racing at some point, and I decided that now might be a good time to prepare myself for that.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3>A troubled racing past<\/h3>\n<p><a id=\"iZuhCJzaTzJXYyPzIJYhTw\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1358585523\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'iZuhCJzaTzJXYyPzIJYhTw',sig:'qYtK5adUpw09VyhWKYGJLKQW0Far3WSAlc9NOFHirA4=',w:'594px',h:'366px',items:'1358585523',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The Canadian received death threats following the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2021\/12\/12\/max-verstappen-world-champion-despite-controversy-in-abu-dhabi\/\" target=\"_self\">Abu Dhabi finale in 2021<\/a>, after his late crash brought out the Safety Car.<\/p>\n<p>FIA race director Michael Masi incorrectly followed the restart procedure, denying Lewis Hamilton a record-breaking eighth world championship.<\/p>\n<p>A torrent of abuse ensued, which became so extreme that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skysports.com\/f1\/news\/12433\/12542978\/williams-driver-nicholas-latifi-received-extreme-death-threats-and-hired-bodyguards-for-trip-to-london\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Latifi hired bodyguards for a trip to London later that year<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>Will he return to motorpsort?<\/h3>\n<p>Despite a difficult spell in the sport, the 28-year-old has watched every F1 race this year, and is not ruling out a return to motorsport in the future:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;This is not necessarily a goodbye to the racing world forever.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Racing has been in my life since the age of 13 and is still something I am extremely passionate about.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t missed an F1 race this season! However, I felt like this was the right time to explore other avenues in my life.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Latifi will begin his degree in August, with his candidacy place accepted at LBS after a five-month process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nicholas Latifi has announced he is stepping away from motorsport to pursue a different career path, in a life update published on Twitter. The Canadian was last seen behind the wheel in Formula 1 for Williams Racing, parting ways with the British team at the end of the 2022 season. After taking some time off [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4706,"featured_media":12359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[339,76,1693,573,94],"class_list":["post-15024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-formula-1","tag-abu-dhabi-grand-prix","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-logan-sargeant","tag-nicholas-latifi","tag-williams"],"modified_by":"Vincent van der Hoek","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}