Robert Kubica says it took him several laps during last weeks testing to adjust to the downforce jump from swapping from Williams to Alfa Romeo.

Robert Kubica was given the honours of driving the Alfa Romeo first during pre-season testing. Having left a Williams race seat at the end of 2019, the Polish driver swapped over to an Alfa Romeo reserve role for 2020 and took personal sponsor PKN Orlen with him.

Driving for Alfa during the opening morning of last week’s pre-season test, Kubica took the wheel of the C39 for the same session this week and popped in a 1:16.942 on the softest compound C5 tyre to finish at the top of the times as the chequered flag fell for the mandatory lunchtime break.

“It doesn’t really matter a lot.” Kubica said to media immediately after jumping out of the car. “What matters is the feeling in the corners and of course when you are lapping three seconds faster than you were lapping here up until last week and the feeling of the car – everything is reflecting how the car is feeling and how how the car is performing.”

“Normally, I’m one of the first ones at the bottom if you’re looking down there but it doesn’t really matter.” Kubica joked. “What matters is the feeling and we did a quite good day with some interesting things to now go through with the data and my feelings. Hopefully, you get a clear outcome and I think, all in all, it’s never easy for a first day morning session with track grip and stuff like this but, today, the feeling was was quite good.”

“Although last week when I drove for the first half a day, the feeling was even better than than it is now but that’s always normal when you’re trying different things and and we have to speed up in order to prepare and to go through different things for Australia and, often, you are testing a few things at the one time.”

Kubica said the jump in downforce from last year’s Williams FW42 to the Alfa Romeo C39 was so vast, that his brain actually stopped him from going faster during his initial run in the car last week: “Normally people think that the quicker you go, the more difficult it gets. I would argue that doing 1:17s this year compared to 1:19s and 1:20s last year is a bit different in difficulty. Last week in the morning, first laps I have more of brain stop that…you know, I could feel I have more grip to deliver and I can go faster but my brain was saying ‘Well, until now this was not possible!’

“So you know it took like a couple of laps to unlock the real feeling but, you know, there is one big friend in this paddock. There are not many friends here as this sport is tough but there is one big friend – downforce!

“Once you have this, it’s a big mate!”