Sergey Sirotkin: F1 race experience will boost reserve role

Sergey Sirotkin says his race experience with Williams last year means he will be able to bring new ideas to Renault, compard to his previous stint at the manufacturer.

Sirotkin spent 2016/17 as Renault test and reserve driver, carrying out in-season and occasional FP1 runs, as he eyed making his debut in the championship.

That graduation ultimately came with Williams – but his season coincided with the squad’s slump in form and he scored just a single point.

Sirotkin’s long-term backers SMP Racing ultimately decided against funding another season with the squad and for 2019 the team has adopted a fresh line-up.

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The Russian driver has a race programme in WEC with SMP but will retain a connection to Formula 1 after re-joining Renault in a test/reserve role.

“Honestly saying for sure I want to be racing,” he said when asked of his return by Motorsport Week.

“It’s a very interesting role but for sure I would always prefer to be in a race car myself but for like a long-term perspective it’s probably an interesting experience.

“I had the chance to look at things here in 2017, then a chance to race a car myself, so I know how I was behaving in certain situations.

“Now I’m back here, we have Daniel [Ricciardo] and Nico [Hulkenberg] which are both great drivers and great people to deal with.

“Now have the chance of being already experienced that myself to look at how they’re behaving in similar situations and knowing how I would behave in the same things.

“It’s quite an interesting experience again, so I’m happy to be back here.”

Sirotkin explained that the winter period had given him the chance to reflect on his year racing for Williams.

“It felt unusual to be properly home for so long,” he commented.

“It’s not that I feel anything specifically good or bad regarding how was the last season.

“I kind of really feel that I had this really necessary time back home, within myself, to really think over what’s happened last year and go through the process, race by race, how I was performing, what I was doing.

“I was not doing this considering it as a work, just doing it slowly, a few thoughts here and there, to kind of really get it in your mind and feel like I got a very strong base on it, strong experience on it.

“It’s nice to be talking here about this but it’s a shame that I cannot jump in the car and do the things now.

“For sure it’s been a very good time to kind of re-think everything and really get the best knowledge from what happened.”