First races will be very difficult - Kubica
Robert Kubica is leaving winter testing downbeat, having seen his schedule on Friday being cut short by excessive wear on car parts for which the team did not have spares.
CTO Paddy Lowe, on Thursday, was adamant the team is heading the right direction, claiming they managed to do the mileage that has planned beforehand, despite having missed the first 2 days of testing at Barcelona. Lowe insisted progress was being made, and the team will be turned around.
For Kubica though, matters are complicated right now, as he needs additional mileage to get used to the car, after having been out of racing for years. In the 6 days of testing that Williams managed, Kubica was unable to match rookie team mate George Russell, leaving 0.8s between them on their best laps.
“Going to the first race after eight years without doing a proper job of testing will be difficult,” he said.
“That is the reality of the situation and I can’t do anything else but prepare as much as I can.
“Probably I did 20 per cent of what I should know and do during this test. We will see
“I have not gone longer than 15 laps on a long run. So there are a lot of question marks. But that is the reality. We did the maximum of what we had.
“There are some positive things. My last real run when I felt the car well was before yesterday afternoon, first run, when the car did things which I was nicely surprised.
“So I got up a lot of confidence but since then my confidence disappeared because the car was not in the right shape.”
When asked whether the opening events would be similar to testing for Williams, Kubica replied: “Unfortunately, I think yes.
“We face a big delay. And some of today’s issues are a consequence of being in a rush.
“So if you struggle to have a car for the week before you will struggle to have spare parts. “Today we were required to have some bits to replace them and we could not replace them. “In the end we did the maximum with what we had. But this maximum is not enough because the car was far from optimal.”
