Kubica had a much better race than usual, it’s true, and that’s backed up by the fact that Russell couldn’t just breeze past him the way he’s been able to do most of the time this year. He needs to do better on lap 1, especially in races where track position is critical. On the basis of quali and the rest of the season I can’t help concluding that if he hadn’t been caught behind Kubica a couple of times, with the problems for tyre and brake management that entailed, he’d have been further up the road.netoperek wrote: ↑29 Oct 2019, 08:58Yes, I know, even I'm not reading anything more into it
As to pace difference, Robert said his car was sliding a lot less than in Q, where it was nearly undriveable.
He had a small issues with his engine during start where it wouldn't give much power for first few seconds. He was told to lift and coast since lap 7 and overall had 27 faster laps to Russels 17 between them in the race. I think both of them had a very solid races. Robert had 13th time and George 17th, faster than both haas drivers.
Robert got an overall performance score of 4 to George's 3.5 on this F1.com telemetry thingy.
On alternatives to Latifi, I’d love to see Sirotkin back but it isn’t going to happen. I suspect the sanctions against Russia over Crimea might be having an effect on SMP’s operations - I don’t think they pulled out of WEC just because they achieved everything they wanted to (ditto Russian Time selling up). So funding for Russians, Mazepin, Markelov etc might not be so abundant as it was. Though having said all that, Lukoil clearly found some roubles for McLaren. I expect Latifi will be solid if unspectacular, but with so much experience in F2, and F1 testing, he ought to be a decent baseline for George. Ultimately there are still too many questions over Kubica to accurately judge Russell at the moment.