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Sirotkin believed race seat in 2019 was quite obvious

Sirotkin believed race seat in 2019 was "quite obvious"

03-12-2018 10:45
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Jake Williams-Smith

Sergey Sirotkin believes that a race seat with Williams for 2019 was looking "quite obvious". According to the Russian, his seat at the team was the most likely outcome despite the several rumoured drivers around the team which eventually saw Robert Kubica announced as his replacement.

In a difficult car with little to no development, Sirotkin did outperform his teammate Lance Stroll in qualifying, winning the battle between teammates across the season.

Despite soldiering on with a poor car, Sirotkin will be without a race seat in 2019 with the popular return of Robert Kubica coming at his expense.

"I would strongly hope for (a second season) and it looked like it was the case," he told Motorsport.com.

"It looked quite obvious it would be the case for quite a while. But it's F1, it's a difficult world.

"To get success there are also many, many different parameters which unfortunately most of the time aren't up to the performance of the driver or whatever."

The Russian's backer, SMP Racing, revealed to Sirotkin they would not be helping him pursue a race seat for 2019 after it was revealed ahead of the announcement at Williams that Kubica would be joining in his place.

"Last week we had a few meetings, I could understand that discussions are not going the way we want them to be.

"Obviously SMP Racing wanted to be professional and didn't want to accept those things, it was a strong sign for me that's it not going to happen.

"But I always hoped that probably something would change, a moment or whatever. It didn't happen."