Robert Kubica, reserve driver for Williams Formula 1 team, expressed his pleasure over his understanding with Williams for the said role. The role has enabled him to grasp the feel of new Formula 1, which is quite different to what he had experienced during his last tenure as the main driver.
The Polish driver who won Canadian Grand Prix in 2008 returned to the sport last year, after the critical crash in 2011, which paralyzed him from the sport. He returned with a splendid race last year, competing for a similar role that he had left.
But Williams seat was given to Sergey Sirotkin after a splendid competition between the two. The performance of Kubica needed to be evaluated further, for which he was offered the “reserve role” in the team.
Kubica expressed his enthusiasm about F1 pre-season, “It’s a good feeling for me. If you think where I was 12 months ago, things have changed quite a lot.
“Actually I am enjoying my position, it’s giving me quite a lot of challenges and also opportunities to see the team working, to see different point of view of many things.
“When you are a race driver, you see things in the race driver mode.
“The engineers, technicians, mechanics, all the team is working, but when you are a race driver you don’t get so deep as I have opportunity to get in this situation.
“It’s a good opportunity and, I’m enjoying it, it’s also good fun, and I think it will be an interesting year.”
He refused to comment about Williams engineering capabilities and said, “This will have to stay in our engineering office”.
He added: “From my point of view, from the goals we had and in the position I am, I think I had quite a clear view of where we have to do some work.
“It’s a bit more of a race driver’s job to optimise it.”
Kubica was scheduled to performed on the last pre-season testing day but stepped down for Lance Stroll providing him with half-day of running before the seasons starts at Australia.
He said, “many people are asking me [why] like I would give away my heart”.
“I felt that it’s right to give them a chance to have more time in the car.
“I had a good idea of the car after my running and I felt that our race drivers would benefit more from being in the car, especially because they have to bring home points, not myself. It’s very simple.”
