Roberts: Latifi had very good 2020, comparison with Russell tough

The Canadian's sole qualifying win came at the Sakhir Grand Prix against replacement driver Jack Aitken, who had stepped up to fill the seat vacated by George Russell, who was racing for Mercedes.

With Williams stuck near the back for the entire year, Latifi failed to score a single point. His best result was 11th, something he achieved on three occasions.

“I think he had a very good season,” said Roberts, as reported by RaceFans. “It’s very easy to forget that it’s not been an easy year coming into the team as a race driver is not easy, particularly when you don’t know what circuit you’re going to go to. We’ve had some new ones to deal with.”

The comparison with Russell was a difficult one for the rookie and Roberts cited the Brit's performance at Mercedes as an example of how quick the 2018 F2 champion really is.

“I think what we saw from George’s outing [at Mercedes] is that George is genuinely very, very good, extremely good," he added.

"So anyone up against him is going to not always look brilliant on the timesheets, particularly in qualifying where George excels.

“But when you look at it in that context and you remember how inexperienced Nicky is in these cars then I think he’s done well.”

The qualifying battle is one that no driver wants to lose and the 16-0 margin against Russell is something Latifi will be hoping to improve on in 2021.

According to RaceFans, the average gap between the two drivers was around 1.2 seconds, with only Pietro Fittipaldi having a worse average starting position than the 25-year-old.

“He’s got a lot to learn in how to extract that qualifying lap," Roberts said.

"Obviously, we [didn’t] help him with that, not only in the car’s pace but the consequence of that is you often only get two goes at it on Saturday because you can’t get out of Q1. Once the car’s got the pace to get out of Q1 and you can get more goes at it, you obviously learn much more quickly.

“So I think we will see improvements within the next year, obviously he’s got a year’s experience under his belt.”