Canadian Grand Prix – Robert Kubica says that his race in Montreal felt more like his rallying days than driving an F1 car.
Returning to the scene of his sole Grand Prix win, the race at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve was, once again, one to forget for Robert Kubica.
Unsurprisingly, the two Williams drivers were the slowest cars on the grid for the Canadian weekend. With Kevin Magnussen starting from the pitlane, it meant that George Russell and Robert Kubica started from P18 & P19 respectively. Kubica had missed some preparation time on Friday, having handed his FW42 over to Canadian Nicholas Latifi for FP1.
Things didn’t get any better in the race, either. Kubica pitted at the end of Lap 8 for a fresh set of Hard tyres but, struggling with those tyres, pitted again on Lap 38 for another fresh set of the same compound.
While Russell brought his car home in P16, Kubica was P18 and three laps down on the leader. He was more than half a lap behind Russell, and bemoaned the lack of grip afterwards: “Difficult race, a much more difficult day than Saturday – and that was difficult! The car was sliding a lot during qualifying on the softest tyres and low fuel so during the race, it felt awful.”
“[It was] More like rally driving than racing and, unfortunately, that doesn’t work in Formula 1. It was really tough to keep it on track, even though I was going very slow so we have to understand that.”
“Unfortunately, there is no magic. Overall grip is missing, we know it’s like this, so we are not able to push.”
Senior Race Engineer Dave Robson said: “We made some small improvements to the car this weekend, and we managed a difficult race well. The team continue to do a very good job with the pitstops and both drivers again completed well-constructed races and brought both cars home with no damage.”
Both Williams drivers remain on zero points for the year, and the team remain last in the Constructor’s Championship.
