Kubica Lacks Confidence Ahead of Season Return

After pre-season testing was brought to a close this week, there is now a sense of pure excitement for the season ahead, which gets under way in just two weeks time in Melbourne. But that wasn't the main feeling for Williams driver, Robert Kubica, who left pre-season testing lacking in confidence.

Robert Kubica is set to make his first full season return to Formula 1 since his final race in Abu Dhabi, 2010. As you'd imagine, Robert would quite clearly benefit from the optimum time spent in the new FW42, but after a poor start to the season in which the Williams garage held a show car for the first two days of testing and not the actual FW42, both Robert Kubica and rookie, George Russell, were left stranded trackside with nothing to drive. However, after a long gruelling two days trackside, the FW42 was released to begin testing.

Unfortunately, the lack of two days testing has led Williams to complete 567 laps, 268 of them belonging to Robert which totals up to just over half of Ferrari's, Sebastian Vettel's laps of 534.

Even with testing complete, Williams are still 2.772 seconds off the ultimate pace set by Ferrari. But then again, Rome wasn't built in a day...

Robert Kubica ended testing with this to say, 'Out of the runs that we did, we managed to learn some things, but it hasn't given me the level of confidence that I would like ahead of Australia.'

With only two weeks left until lights out in Melbourne, how will Robert Kubica fair under the pressures of Formula 1?