Lowe: Sirotkin 'couldn't be in better shape for F1'

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Williams chief technical officer Paddy Lowe is confident that Sergey Sirotkin will quickly win over any doubters in 2018.

The team has been criticised for choosing Sirotkin over Robert Kubica for a full-season seat in the FW41. But Lowe once again brushed aside suggestions that the young Russian was a 'pay driver'.

"Sergey was selected simply on merit for his driving," Lowe insisted at the unveiling of the team's new car.

He explained that the race team was entirely separate and independent of the commercial side of the Williams operation.

"That team knows nothing about finances," he said. "They’re not involved in it, they weren’t aware of any factors like that. They made the call themselves on the data."

And the data told them that the former GP2 and Formula 2 driver was the fastest prospect available to take over from Felipe Massa, who retired at the end of last season.

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The team has already pledged that any financial backing from Sirotkin's SMP Racing backers will go directly into technical development.

Lowe himself was far more impressed by the pedigree of the SMP driver development program that Sirotkin has been through.

“This is a kind of driver academy," he explained. "If you look at the scale of it, it covers Russia, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, drawing drivers from all of that geography.

"They have 1,500 drivers on their books at the moment, starting from a very young age in karting.

"[It's] a great programme, and much bigger than the likes of the one Red Bull run which is better known.”

“Sergey is the first graduate of that programme to get to Formula 1," Lowe added. "And he’s done his full apprenticeship in F3, F2.

"I think that he couldn’t be in better shape to hit the ground running as a new driver in Formula 1," he insisted. "We have no concerns about how well he’ll perform."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.