Sirotkin felt confident he would retain Williams seat for 2019 season

Sergey Sirotkin confirms he felt more than confident to get a second season in Formula 1 with Williams. The rookie scored just one point throughout the season which turned out to be 14% of Williams' point tally.

Robert Kubica will replace Sirotkin for the 2019 season, while F2 champion George Russell takes over Lance Stroll. But for the majority of the season, Sirotkin was hopeful of retaining his seat.

"It looked like it was the case. It looked quite obvious it would be the case for quite a while. But it's Formula 1, it's a difficult world," Sirotkin told Motorsport.

Sirotkin's sponsors, SMP racing decided to terminate the partnership due to the poor results produced by the team.

"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," the Russian added.

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