Robert Kubica’s performance in the two one day tests in October was termed ‘productive’, but the Williams F1 team had divulged no details of the tests. After a day of tyre testing at Abu Dhabi, they are also not revealing the Polish driver’s top speed.
Kubica is considered the favourite to win the second Williams seat for 2018. He took part in the Pirelli tyre testing in a Williams 2017 car and came seventh in the timesheets at the end of the first day.
He was four-tenths quicker than the other Williams test driver, Sergey Sirotkin. While Sirotkin clocked his best time on soft tyres, Kubica was on the new hypersofts.
According to Williams’ tech chief Paddy Lowe, laptimes are not indicative of actual performance and declined to discuss Kubica’s pace.
Talking on the second day of testing, Lowe said: “I’m not gonna talk about speed, It’s a complicated topic.
“I’m sure you want me to give some answers about that, but it’s not something we are not going to discuss.
“It’s a really complicated topic, performance and speed, so to read a timesheet is quite misleading, so I’m not gonna talk about that. We haven’t even analysed it for ourselves,” he added.
Lowe also assured they did not see any issues in Kubica’s performance due to his physical condition.
“Robert drove the 2014 car at Silverstone and Hungary, so we have lots of good information, and Robert did a fantastic job,” Lowe said.
“He’s a very, very professional guy, very knowledgeable, very experienced, and that was a great benefit during these evaluations.
“We wanted to see Robert as he hasn’t driven a current car or current tyres, so of course it was interesting to see how he got on with that.
“No problems. He’s absolutely fine. Good driving, no complaints, no issues. All went well.”
Explaining the delay in announcing their second driver, Lowe says the fight is not just between the drivers they tested in Abu Dhabi, and the team is still discussing the possibilities.
“We’ll take the decision at the time we are ready. When we have all the information, and we are ready to declare it.
“The drivers we brought to this test doesn’t mean that it’s the drivers under consideration for racing next year.
“This was a tyre test, which is an opportunity to look at two different drivers as well as for Lance to look at the new tyres. That was the purpose.
“Of course it gives us more information about drivers, but it’s not setting a definition from the pool from which we will pick race drivers.”
