Kubica explains his 'strange' crash in Brazilian GP practice

Missing first practice isn’t ideal. Crashing on your first flying lap in second practice is a nightmare. Unfortunately, that’s what happened to Robert Kubica in Brazil on Friday in what was a strange incident – but speaking after the session, the Pole offered up an explanation…

Kubica, who is competing in his penultimate race weekend with Williams, made way for the team’s reserve driver Nicholas Latifi in a rain-hit opening practice at Interlagos, which already put him on the backfoot.

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Conditions improved as the afternoon went on, meaning teams could get straight down to running on slick tyres. However, the run-off and grassed areas remained sodden.

So when a Haas ran off track and rejoined, it pulled water onto the track. Kubica was running a few seconds behind and said when his slick tyres hit the wet stuff, he lost control of his Williams through Turn 3 and hit the barriers hard, causing significant damage.

“This was my first lap around here and I lost in a very nasty way, which I didn’t really understand,” said Kubica. “It was very strange. But after reviewing the videos, the Haas who was in front of me by a few seconds went off, over the kerb, and pulled out quite a lot of water onto the track.

“You can see when I approached with the front left tyre, I was lifting a lot of water. I was with the hard tyre, lost it completely in a nasty way.

“I was completely shocked by what happened. I was completely unprepared, but it’s difficult to be prepared in such a situation.

“It is never nice to lose free practice, it’s never nice to crash the car, but I think today was bad luck. If I would be closer to him, I would see it. If I was a few seconds later, my engineer would have told me. Unfortunately, this is motorsport.”

Williams have enough parts to fix the car in time for final practice on Saturday, where the weather conditions are expected to be drier and warmer.