Q+A with Robert Kubica

Having qualified and finished in third place at the Belgian GP, Renault's Robert Kubica is more than motivated as he finds himself in situation where he can fight against the top three teams. The only blip in the previous weekend was an overshotting of the pit itself, allowing Mark Webber to steal second place.

Robert, you finished on the podium at Spa – talk us through your race… "It was a really incredible race, but also a difficult race because of the changeable conditions and it was very easy to make mistakes. I think we had all weather conditions in the race: completely dry at the start, then slicks on a wet track, and intermediate tyres at the end of the race. Sometimes three quarters of the track was completely dry, but there was one corner where it was raining. I didn’t make any big mistakes on the track, but unfortunately I made one in the pit lane, which cost me second place."

What exactly happened during your final pit stop? "When I was in the pit lane I had to change a few settings on my steering wheel in order to run with the intermediate tyre. Unfortunately I got distracted, missed my braking point and overshot the pit, so I lost second place. But third place is still a very good result for the whole team and I think it’s a very nice reward for all the guys in the factory and at the track for all their hard work recently."

What goes through your mind during a race with such challenging weather conditions? "You just have to use your feeling, experience and judge the conditions and the amount of risk you are taking. And when you are racing for a podium, you have to make sure you don’t make any mistakes because if you go off it will be painful. If you are in P10 or P12 you might risk more because you have nothing to lose, but when you are fighting for the podium you have to make sure you bring the car home."

The car looked competitive all weekend in all conditions. That must be encouraging for the final six races… "Yes, we were fighting with the McLaren and the Red Bull drivers so I’m really pleased about the performance of the car. In fact, we had great pace all weekend and whatever the conditions we were always in the top five. And finally we got the f-duct on the car, which was working really well and gave us a big improvement with our pace. I was very happy to be fighting at the front with the big teams so let’s hope we can continue in this direction."