Kubica: Turkish GP form a one-off

Kubica and teammate Nick Heidfeld could manage no better than fourth and fifth in Istanbul last weekend as the outfit were unable to fight with Ferrari and McLaren for the first time this year.

And although some people have suggested that that result could be a sign that BMW Sauber are falling behind in the development race against their rivals, Kubica is more positive about the situation.

"Turkey was a kind of grand prix similar to last year, where we were quite far away from the first two teams but well clear from everybody else," said Kubica.

"I hope it was only a single grand prix issue, and I hope in Monaco and Canada we can stay closer and fight with McLaren and Ferrari."

Kubica does not believe that his team's failure to finish on the podium in either Barcelona or Turkey is evidence of a drop off of pace - even though he admits the team's effort to turn around their fortunes after the difficult start to testing may have exhausted them of ideas.

"I think we, as everybody knows, struggled in the beginning of winter testing and a lot of effort was put in on solving problems and putting everything we had to make this car work," he explained.

"We managed to do that, but most probably we put already everything we had in. Still, I think Turkey was just one grand prix, because I was quite surprised by our pace in Barcelona.

"We could keep the McLaren pace in the race and qualifying, so although some people in the team were disappointed with fourth place I was actually pleased. I suppose when you are eating well, the appetite goes higher."

One issue that Kubica is confident BMW Sauber have got on top of is their starts, with modifications to their clutch made in Turkey having resolved the problem of their recent poor getaways.

"We had some issues that we solved for Turkey. In Istanbul the start was very good and apparently we came back to the clutch specification we had at the beginning of the year.

"In Turkey we used the same clutch as we had in Australia and both starts were very good. I think we are now on top of development and it looks much better."