MONTMELO, Spain -- Robert Kubica has warned against making comparisons between his and Williams rookie Sergey Siriotkin's times over winter testing.
Williams picked Sirotkin over Kubica as its second race driver for 2018, but retained the Pole in a development role for the season which will include some test appearances and three Friday practice sessions. Both drivers appeared in the car on Tuesday and Kubica's best time was 0.327s quicker than the Russian's.
Sirotkin propelled himself into race seat contention at the post-season Abu Dhabi test last year, where he and Kubica were evaluated simultaneously. Kubica was quick to point out the fact comparisons are different now the they have very different roles to prepare for.
When asked on Wednesday if he felt he was quicker than Sirotkin, he said: "You cannot compare.
"I don't care about my feeling, I have different job. The times are really irrelevant I would say, especially in my position, I'm here to help and try things, I'm actually driving different conditions [which] puts me in difficult situation because I will not be racing.
"My job is not to set fastest lap times, my job is to give best feedback and to do this it's my job to see what is enough and how I have to drive to be able to do it, which is not easy. It's a new situation, but I think I'm pretty happy of how the things are going."
"I know everyone is looking at lap times and there were a lot of comments that I was lacking one-and-a-half seconds in Abu Dhabi which is strange. It doesn't really matter. What is positive is that I jumped into the new car and in 20 laps [on Tuesday] I was actually able to drive it in a good way without any big preparations."
Kubica says he is approaching this test different than he would have if he had been elevated to the race drive.
"In the way I'm spending days here, I am not spending it like a race driver. I am not going to the hotel to chill out and be ready I have to balance it as I cannot get in the car tired and not concentrate. Yesterday I left here at nearly midnight and this morning I was here at 7:20 am. It is a bit different but I'm looking forward to seeing if we can improve things and get knowledge with things."