If you were a Formula 1 driver and the season began in just two weeks, you’d have a lot to be excited about. If you were any other driver than Robert Kubica that is.
Robert heads into the first race of the season having only managed to test for 268 laps—the fewest of any driver on the grid in 2019. That’s not good. there’s little he can do about it now.
“That’s the situation, I cannot change it,” Kubica said. “I have to make sure we are doing everything what we can, from my side.
“Coming back after eight years, probably I know 20% of the things that I should know before going to Australia.
“The rest is unknown. I haven’t done longer than 15 laps long run.
“There is a lot of question marks. But that’s the reality, we cannot change it.”
A delay in getting the FW42 Williams F1 car to testing and a lack of new parts during testing meant Robert was unable to really dig in deep and get a rhythm and feel for the car.
“My last real run when I feel the car well was [Wednesday] afternoon, first run, when the car did things which I was surprised [by], a really nice surprise.
“So I get up really a lot of confidence, but since then my confidence disappear, because the car was not in the right state.”
That’s a bit of a buzzkill for anyone and if you’ve been out of the sport for eight years, you need that running time to get your mojo working again. Robert didn’t have that time and Williams firmly placed their foot on the neck of last place during testing.
It doesn’t bode well for the team or Robert but something tells me he will be able to hit the ground running in Australia. The big question is, will the team do the same? Robert has always been very frank with his comments, something I wonder if the team had forgotten from his previous stint at Williams. He’s already started and the season hasn’t.
Hat Tip: Autosport
Not for one second do I think he should have gotten the drive. This really hasn’t done anything to convince me otherwise.
There’s an interesting article over at the Mail that I’ll discuss on tomorrow’s show but it has to do with his limitation in his right arm and it does make me wonder how he’ll manage. He’s done a lot of laps and in a car that ins’t as competitive so it will be interesting to see.
Except that’s a done deal. The guy has the drive and deserves a chance to see what he can do. Regardless of the naysayers, Williams has screwed Kubica out of his right to drive the goddam car. Williams is a colossal disaster and the entire team has to pay the price of Claire Williams incompetence. Has there ever been a team so unprepared for the start of F1 season? I don’t know whether Kubica will be able to do the job but I sure get sick of people kicking him when he’s down.
Very interesting…I hope he does good but the Williams team sort of reminded me of the “Keystone Cops” at times during the testing but…fingers crossed because, like it or not, Robert is definitely one of bigger stories from the human stand point. He will definitely bring the eyeballs to F1…which it needs right now. I know this is off topic but are you going to touch on the Ted Kravitz drama with SKY (on this week’s podcast)…no Teds Notebook this year which really sucks for the average viewer…yeah he rambled on at times but it was something I looked forward… Read more »
I thought I read that Ted was retained but Sky and will be there doing his thing. Was there additional info about no Ted’s notebook? It’s the one thing I look forward to the most and I know I am not alone, why would Sky ditch that?
Will Buxton was hinting about it on his twitter a while back and I found this article because, like you, I looked forward to that part of the F1 broadcast
https://thesportsrush.com/ted-kravitz-sky-sports-teds-notebook-reportedly-cancelled-new-role-for-ted/
It makes no sense but hopefully there will be enough backlash from this to null and void this.
It’s a shame if true. Ted’s notebook is one of the best segments they have so if they are doing away with it, let’s hope they have something even better.
love Ted !
It was funny to watch the two Williams drivers’ post-testing interviews back to back, with the surly balding Kubica complaining about lack of laps and preparation, right before the cheerful boyish Russell talked about how happy he was with how many laps he got. The two of them could not be more different. Williams is going to be fun in a reality-television kind of way this season, with the team making mistake after mistake and Kubica publicly laying into them over it.
Robert just needs to get in the car and drive . . . just drive. He needs to make the most out of the situation he’s in. Get more out of the car than the car should give, like Alonso did the last few years, and people will notice. It’s not a great situation to be in, but it’s better than sitting on the sidelines watching.