Kubica's ability to 'push' challenged by cold conditions

Robert Kubica was back in action Tuesday afternoon at the Circuit de Catalunya, but like for his colleagues cold conditions through a few challenges the Polish driver's way.

Williams was just another team challenged by the persisting freezing weather in Barcelona, conditions which hindered the Grove-based outfit's knowledge of the performance of its FW41.

Kubica followed Sergey Sirotkin behind the wheel to provide the team with his initial assessment of the team's 2018 charger, putting in 47 laps and achieving the seventh fastest time of the day.

The untypically cold temperatures did not make the Williams reserve driver's job easy however.

• Lowe: Williams 'pushing to the limit' for big step forward

"I think we have achieved the maximum we could do due to the weather and general track temperatures," said Kubica

"I got my first feeling for the car, and saw what we were able to do in difficult conditions.

"It is not easy to jump into a new car with such difficult weather conditions and have the confidence to push, but I think we did some important work, although it was short.

"However, it gave us, and especially myself, an idea of how to work better for the future to address some areas where we can improve the car.

"The car has some very powerful areas, but, in the meantime, we need to work on some issues which I am sure we will get on top of.

"If we do that then the driveability, and also the confidence of the driver will be higher."

Cold conditions notwithstanding, Williams technical director Paddy Lowe reckoned the team still managed to gather some important information over the course of the day.

"Robert took over for the afternoon with improving conditions and, managed two performance runs before the temperatures dropped and again became critical for switching on the tyres.

"We reverted again to data gathering during the light snowfall! With such instability in tyre temperatures this was not a day in which we can learn anything performance-wise, but we gathered good characteristic data and achieved another 100 laps of reliable running of the new car."

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