Robert Kubica has revealed that he has turned down the opportunity to race in the FIA World Endurance Championship this year in favour of concentrating on his reserve driver role with the Williams Martini Racing team in Formula 1.
The Polish driver participated in two tests with the CEFC TRSM Racing as he evaluated whether to join the team for their LMP1 programme in the 2018-19 superseason, but the thirty-three-year-old says the workload is already intensive at Williams, and it was not rational for him to add a race programme in the World Endurance Championship.
“The tests went quite well, but the problem is time,” Kubica said at a press conference organised by Grupa Lotos. “I will have very little [time], so I decided not to compete in the WEC.
“I will focus on my role at Williams. During the past 45 days, I’ve spent two days at home and I don’t really know anymore where home is – I’d love to race but I have to be rational.”
CEFC TRSM Racing’s sporting director Graeme Lowdon said the team would have been happy to offer Kubica an opportunity to race this year, but he admits adding a race programme in the World Endurance Championship alongside his Formula 1 commitments would have meant a lot of work on the Polish drivers shoulders.
“Robert is a good friend of the team — he helped us out in testing and we gave him the chance to see what the car was like,” said Lowdon to Motorsport.com.
“If he was looking to race in the WEC, we’d have have been very happy to have him. His duties at Williams are quite extensive, so I think a WEC programme on top would have been an awful lot of work.”
