![]() Kubica trailed Alfa Romeo team-mate Antonio Giovinazzi by over a second on qualifying pace in both the Netherlands and Italy and finished outside the points in 14th and 15th places. And for those only looking at a surface level, trailing Russell in 2019 basically meant being last every weekend – which is a much more conspicuously poor performance than being around 16th a lot. It encouraged those desperate for his comeback to succeed to look for suspicious reasons why it wasn’t. That’s another reason why Williams being so drastically cut adrift at the back in 2019 is problematic for assessing Kubica. Russell certainly handled Williams’s situation more gracefully and with more optimism, drawing plaudits for his public support of the team no matter how dismal its performance where Kubica was more likely to prompt negative or suspicious headlines.īut it was surely easier to psychologically cope with one season at the back for a 21-year-old F1 rookie whose long-term future with the best team on the grid was all but assured than for a 34-year-old who’d once had clear champion potential but been out of F1 for eight seasons after a nearly fatal and life-changing crash, and was still trying to prove to the world that he was physically able to be an F1 driver. And Kubica, whose racecraft was little dimmed, often outfoxed Russell on first laps only to be overtaken later. It was Kubica, not Russell, who scored Williams’s only point that season with a retrospective promotion into the top 10 at the German Grand Prix. So 2019-spec Kubica was pretty much halfway performance wise between 2020-spec rookie Latifi and 2021-spec slightly more experienced Latifi. This year the improving Latifi has been 0.424% adrift so far. His replacement Nicholas Latifi fared worse relative to Russell in his rookie season last year with a 0.607% deficit. Somewhere in the middle was probably the majority opinion: given Williams’s plight, Russell’s clear potential, Kubica’s length of time outside F1 and the serious physical limitations he’d faced since his 2011 rallying crash, Kubica’s performance was respectable.īut not much more than that, and – very, very sadly – not in the realm of what he looked capable of had his F1 career continued uninterrupted at the start of the decade.ĭiscounting anomalous sessions where their car specs were significantly different or where crashes or failures skewed the picture, Kubica’s average qualifying deficit to Russell through 2019 was 0.523%. Kubica’s comments that “some boundaries were probably crossed” and things happened “for strange reasons” when Williams chose not to run a new wing – which he’d liked – on either car after practice at Suzuka that year were a prime example.Īt the other end of the fan reaction scale were those who just pilloried Kubica for spending most of that season in last place. That fan stance was encouraged by Kubica’s reaction to some of the decisions the team (then at its absolute nadir and basically in crisis all season) made around who got what components in a time of near-permanent parts shortage. To his hardcore supporters, it was a year of being robbed by underhand Williams activities that prioritised Russell. That was how Robert Kubica responded when asked by The Race’s Scott Mitchell if he felt he’d been able to show his true level more in his two stand-in outings with Alfa Romeo this year than in his troubled full-season Formula 1 return with Williams in 2019.Īnd his response chimed with an increasingly popular theory: that Kubica’s 2019 campaign looks much less disappointing given what his then-team-mate George Russell has achieved since and should therefore be re-evaluated.Ģ019 spec Kubica was pretty much halfway performance wise between 2020 spec rookie Latifi and 2021 spec slightly more experienced Latifi.īut perceptions of Kubica’s 2019 are particularly polarised. “And you’ve seen what he can do last year with Mercedes and it was not bad.” “Because if you think that on some tracks I was matching George’s pace – OK it was not consistent but I think many times he had to sweat quite a lot to stay in front in qualifying. “It was disappointing and a tough year, but I knew that in some circumstances I was not as bad as people thought. “The only problem we had was the tools we had and that the situation we were in was a very difficult one.
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