Kubica ‘completely shocked’ by ‘nasty’ Brazil FP2 crash

Robert Kubica was left “completely shocked” after crashing “in a nasty way” during second practice for the Brazilian Grand Prix on Friday after being caught out by some standing water on one of the kerbs.

After missing FP1 to give Williams development driver Nicholas Latifi more seat time, Kubica crashed just minutes into FP2, his car snapping midway through the Senna S and into the wall on the exit of the corner.

The shunt brought out a red flag and left Kubica’s Williams car with front-end damage, bringing his day to an early end.

“This was my first lap around here, I lost in a very nasty way the car, which I didn’t really understand,” Kubica said.

“But after reviewing, the Haas [of Kevin Magnussen] who was in front of me by a few seconds, he went off, over the kerb, and pulled out quite a lot of water.

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

“It’s frustrating because we need a bit of luck. It’s not an easy situation for us, today we didn’t have luck. I only understood it when I saw video, otherwise I thought something had broke – but it didn’t break, there was no failure.”

Kubica was left frustrated there had not been time to be warned about the water after seeing Magnussen pull up a lot of spray.

“It is never nice to lose free practice, it’s never nice to crash the car, but I think today was bad luck,” Kubica said.

“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.

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