Robert Kubica says a lack of consistency in Formula 1 this year has been among his biggest frustrations, as he explained the issues he has encountered with Williams’ FW42.
Kubica scored Williams’ sole point at the German Grand Prix but has largely trailed team-mate George Russell this year, with the deficit between the pair expanding to as much as 1.2s per lap in qualifying.
He will leave Williams after next month's season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
“I did say many times this year has been very difficult, very complicated, but one of the things which I think I miss most is the consistency of delivering and how the car is feeling,” he said.
“This car is not the easiest one, it has not massive downforce, but it shouldn’t variate the performance, or the feeling, of it in such a big way from one session to the other.
“You cannot explain it with the track condition or stuff like this. The feeling I get is as soon as I leave the pit lane I’m 90 per cent sure it’s going a good way or bad way.”
Kubica went on to comment that “I don’t think the car is inconsistent. The grip it delivers is inconsistent. I don’t think it’s actually the car.
“I would say… I don’t know how to express it in short words. I don’t think it’s a characteristic of the car. It’s not something about the car itself.”
When it was put to Kubica that his use of Pirelli’s notoriously tricky tyres – having missed the entirety of the company’s era pre-2019 – could be an influencing factor, he dismissed such a concept.
“But I’m saying I’m leaving the garage and feeling different,” he said. “What’s the difference in 400m [before T1] I can make to the tyres?
“The tyres… you can get them in a better operating window, or worse, but in a certain point you have them, like in Mexico. In qualifying I turned into first three corners with much lower speed and the car keeps going straight.
“Then [on] Sunday I leave the garage and the balance was completely different. [The] engineers on the lap to the grid they tell me ‘the car is completely different’ and I’m [saying] ‘yeah it feels different’.
“I understand your [the media’s] point [that] the tyres have a big effect, but when you leave the garage, you go straight, the first two corners, the tyres are in more or less same shape… as unless you change your tyre blankets, temperatures, pressures… if they are the same there’s no way the tyre can have an effect unless you changed them.
“But with Pirelli we are very limited with the operating window. It’s not like the old days. Everybody is more or less constrained to obtain the same temperatures and pressures.
“It’s not something which let’s say can have an influence of the feeling and of the actual grip by this amount.”
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