Kubica cautious before Singapore

How do you prepare for racing in Singapore?

Singapore is one of the hardest races of the entire season. The circuit layout is very bumpy and you’re fighting the car all the time. You’re continually in the corners and the only place where you get a breather for a couple of seconds is on the start-finish straight. After this, you also have the strange timetable that means we work late, go to bed late and wake up in the afternoon. You don’t feel any difference during the race weekend itself, but each year it has felt a bit strange to come back to a normal schedule afterwards.

You enjoy street circuits. Are you looking forward to this one?

Yes. There are lots of bumps, kerbs, and bits of track where you have to keep some margin for mistakes because the walls are very close - especially in the last sector. I always enjoy driving there and, although the race is very long and demanding, it’s a good track for racing.

What do you focus on in terms of car set-up?

The aero side is still very important but because it’s bumpy and there are many low-speed corners, the car has to be as good as possible in terms of mechanical grip. The behaviour of the car needs to be right: you’re often using the kerbs in the low speed corners, and limited for mechanical grip, so the car must be easy to drive and give the driver confidence to attack the kerbs, if you want to extract the maximum from the package. The other factor is that because this is a temporary circuit, the grip levels develop much faster and much more than on a permanent track. So you need to anticipate the track evolution and what it will change for the car balance.

You had an excellent weekend in Monaco. Can you repeat it in Singapore?

I think we must be careful not to take anything for granted. It’s true that Singapore is the closest circuit to Monaco in the calendar, but Monaco was over four months ago. I’d like the car to be as competitive and easy to drive as it was back then, because it makes it easy for me to push straight away and easier for the engineers to work on extracting the final bit of performance. But things change quickly in Formula 1 and it may not be the case. My approach will be as usual: I will keep in mind that we are fighting in a very strong pack of cars, and lately teams like Williams have come very strong, so we need to wait and see. But I’m definitely looking forward to a good performance.