Williams-owner Claire Williams has said that it is wrong to assume Robert Kubica is faster than the Williams line-up just because he outperformed them in winter testing.
Heading into 2018, Kubica was a strong contender for a seat at Williams, but was eventually snubbed for the last seat next to Lance Stroll in favour of rookie Sergey Sirotkin. The Pole instead settled for a reserve driver role, to the disappointment of his massive fanbase around the world.
Kubica proceeded to drive two half days of pre-season testing, on which he out-performed the driver he shared the car with that day both times. Kubica had the best Williams-time over the whole testing period, until Sirotkin narrowly beat his time on the last day.
Claire Williams was asked about this, and what she thinks it means that the times of the reserve and the main drivers were so close.
“I think it probably says that it’s been a very challenging test schedule, not least because of the weather."
“People may go out and they may do a run on a soft tyre in perfect conditions and then the other drivers may not have that opportunity, because the weather might not be so great, or we’ve chosen to go for a different set-up direction that isn’t necessarily the optimum one."
“So I don’t think you can necessarily judge, not to that level of detail.”
“I think you can look at the timesheet and go 'wow, Mercedes are at the top'. That’s probably about right."
“But I think when you are looking and trying to compare drivers, within one team during a test session, while you don’t actually know yourself the programme that the engineers are running and if you don’t take into account the weather conditions right there and then when they are doing their [fastest] lap."
“I think it’s very difficult to sit there and to say: 'Have Williams potentially made the wrong decision because the reserve driver has set the fastest lap?'"
“No, I don’t think that that’s right."
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