Robert Kubica believes Williams’ dismal 2018 season wasn’t helped by the team seemingly ignoring early concerns by the drivers.
The Grove-based outfit endured the third-worst campaign in their 40-year history points-wise, scoring just seven across the 21 races.
An attempted change in philosophy regarding car design resulted in multiple flaws which left Williams at the back of the grid but the scale of the problems appeared to be a genuine shock to those in the team.
“We really thought we had a good car according to data from the simulator and the various departments,” Kubica told Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport.
“Maybe they should have listened to the drivers and reacted faster.
“I don’t build the car but sometimes the driver becomes aware of a problem earlier than the best engineer in the world,” he explained.
“At the beginning of the season we still had correlation problems. In the end, these deviations between tools and reality led to the misjudgment with the car.
“Nevertheless, we made good progress in the second half of the season, especially in the simulator.”
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Williams’ year was largely a case of just waiting for it to end as their lack of competitiveness compared to even the other midfield teams meant there was little to be salvaged.
“We improved the car, but in the course of the development work we also discovered some other weak spots that had nothing to do with the lap times,” Kubica continued.
“From our position, it was really difficult to close the gap. The others also continued to develop.
“Sauber were behind us at the start of the season but they had an incredible pace of development, eventually making it into the midfield.”
Now the Polish driver will step up from a reserve driver role to race for Williams in 2019 and he is relatively confident the situation will be much better.
“It was a difficult season for Williams, but also an important one. We have understood the mistakes and now have to learn from them and not repeat them,” he stated.
“We need to lay down the development for 2019 so that it does not happen again.”
