Keep pushing to get closer to the front - Kubica
After collecting quite some points and a podium finish in the first three races of the season, Renault Formula One Team driver Robert Kubica is ready to keep pushing to get closer to the front during this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix.
Robert, you had a strong weekend in Malaysia and finished the race in fourth place. Were you satisfied with the result? "If you had offered me fourth place before the start of the weekend, I would have taken it. Like Australia, it was another strong performance by the whole team and a good weekend all round. In qualifying we made the right decisions and reacted well to the weather conditions, and in the race I made up a couple of places at the start, which was important for the final result. To have scored 30 points in two races is a good achievement and as much as we could have hoped for."
The team is adding new developments at each race – can you feel the car improving? "It’s great to see the team pushing so hard and bringing new parts for each race but, as a driver, it’s difficult to judge how much the car has improved when you are driving on different circuits each week, and in different weather conditions. For example, Sepang is a totally different circuit to Melbourne and requires different characteristics from the car. But we know from the data that the car is getting better and better."
Are you looking forward to this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix? "It’s not my favourite Grand Prix of the year, but all the races are just as important as each other with the same points available. The track is quite interesting because there are some unusual corners, such as turn one, which is almost a full circle and is quite difficult technically. The circuit has a similar layout to Sepang with both high and low speed corners, so I think we can be competitive there. And we will have some more updates for the car to help us continue closing the gap to the front."
What are your thoughts on the season so far? "Obviously Bahrain was a big disappointment but it was good to make up the lost ground in the last two races. We know that our car is still not the quickest, but we have made some good decisions in the races and I feel we really deserve the results we have achieved. I don’t think there are any real surprises this year. Most of the teams are very close together in terms of performance with Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari as the top three teams. We are just behind them along with Mercedes, and then you have a close fight between Force India, Williams and Toro Rosso. So it’s very tight and we need to keep pushing to get closer to the front and to maintain the advantage over the teams behind us."
Source Renault
