Robert Kubica expecting better weekend in Australia

What more have you learned about where the team stands after the race in Bahrain?

We had a very intense winter working hard to understand and improve the car, so it was nice to finally be able to compare where we stand. I still want a couple more races to really judge the situation, because Bahrain is a slightly unusual circuit in some aspects, but I’m feeling very positive. We didn’t achieve our full potential in qualifying or the race, for different reasons, but seventh position was realistic in both cases. It was disappointing not to achieve that, but encouraging to know that we had the possibility of doing it.

You talked about the car’s potential - what are your thoughts on the R30 now?

The weekend in Bahrain basically confirmed the feelings I had in Valencia at the first test, in terms of where the car is strong and where we can still improve. The car has a lot of strengths and we are working hard to get even better in what we do well, and improve in the areas where we are less strong. The race this year is not just at the track, but also in the factory to deliver new developments. The team at Enstone has been working 24/7 to produce updates and the first results in Bahrain gave a good step forward in performance.

The racing in Bahrain came in for a lot of criticism. What was it like from the cockpit to race without refuelling?

Especially at the beginning, it felt like the race was happening in slow motion compared to last year because we had so much fuel onboard and the lap times were so much slower. It was interesting to see how the different teams reacted to the challenge: we set a benchmark for the strategy by stopping very early for new tyres, and we saw the other cars that started on the softer tyre all came into the pits two or three laps after us.

We now only have three sets of tyres to use in Friday practice, and the running time is quite limited, so you can’t develop such a good understanding of the differences between the two compounds. Teams will have to be very reactive to how the tyres are behaving in race conditions, and they’ll need to adapt their strategies quickly.

How will the R30 cope with the demands of the Melbourne circuit?

Overall, before the start of the season, I had the feeling that Melbourne would be a better circuit for us than Bahrain. Now that we have seen the other cars running and collected more information about where we stand, I think even more that it will be a good circuit for us. The circuit is very low grip at the start of the weekend and you need good mechanical grip, braking stability and ride, so I hope we can put in a strong performance and achieve the car’s full potential.