Robert Kubica says Williams’ FW41 was “nearly impossible” to keep on track during his practice run at the Spanish Grand Prix, and has warned the team cannot expect miracles in 2018.
Kubica, in his role as Williams’ test and development driver, took over Sergey Sirotkin’s car for the opening session at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, the first time he had driven the FW41 since pre-season testing, which took place at the same venue.
Kubica finished a lowly 19th, three seconds off the pace, having spun through Turn 13 on one of his hot laps, one of several drivers to have a mishap in the session.
Only Williams stablemate Lance Stroll placed lower, the Canadian having run wide through the Turn 5 gravel in an incident that brought his session to a premature end.
Williams holds last in the Constructors’ Championship and when asked to explain the team’s fundamental problem, he replied: “[It’s the] same as three months ago!
“I’m not the right person to go too much into the details. We know exactly what is our weakest part of the car.
“What is good [is that] we started a project which should help us to understand better, improve it and hopefully solve it completely.
“It’s not a question of one day or one month, probably it’s even more, so we have to be patient.
“Miracles will not happen, we will have better tracks, for example [like] Baku. Coming to Barcelona, I was expecting to be in a difficult situation. FP1 was even more difficult than expected.
“We will try to help our main drivers with the balance of the car, to make it easier for them to drive.
“Performance is a different story. We have to fix our many issues, in order to think about performance and trying to attract the maximum from what we have.
“This morning, we were slow, but apart from being slow, it was nearly impossible to keep the car on the track. That’s something we need to change, in order to make our drivers’ lives easier.”
Kubica will return to the cockpit of the FW41 for Wednesday’s test day and added: “We have quite a big programme of understanding some areas of the car and I’m happy to do it.
“Although I hope the car balance will be better than today, because if not, it will be a long day.”
Kubica's next practice run is scheduled for Austria, with his third outing set for Abu Dhabi.
