Williams deputy team principal Claire Williams has described claims her drivers are not given equal equipment as “crazy”.

Robert Kubica has been out-qualified by his rookie team mate George Russell in all nine races this year and only finished a race in front of him once. This has prompted speculation among Kubica’s supporters that the drivers’ cars are being run in different specifications.

Williams firmly rejected such claims. “There is absolutely no difference between George and Robert’s car,” she said.

“If anything else, we don’t have the budget to create two different types of race cars. So this speculation is just crazy.

“We do everything to make sure that both George and Robert have the same equipment, the same test items at every race weekend that we can to give them the best opportunity going into Saturday and Sunday.”

The team has endured a troubled start to its 2019 campaign as the FW42 has proved far from competitive. However Williams said both drivers knew they would face a challenging year.

“All we can ask of both of them is that they’re as committed as they can be to the journey that we’re on at the moment, because we are one a journey and they knew that when both George and Robert started with us this year they knew what they were coming into.

“We didn’t talk to them before the season started and say ‘we think we’re going to do a whole lot better this year and you’re going to be fighting at the top of the midfield’. They knew, so they were mentally prepared for that, and they’ve done everything that we asked them to do and that’s get their heads down to do the best on the the race track they can with the car that they’ve got.”

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2019 F1 season