While George Russell has revealed that the FW42 has an unspecified "fundamental" issue that will take "months" to fix, such is the lack of spare parts that he and his teammate, Robert Kubica, are having their race weekends totally compromised from the outset.

"Realistically speaking we are facing not an easy weekend again," Kubica told reporters in Bahrain today. "Knowing the difficulties we had in Australia, it is true that Bahrain is a different configuration and a different specification, but still it is not that from one week to another there will be miracles.

"It is not an easy situation also from a drivers' point of view," he continued, "because we will be limited with spare parts and everything.

"Look at what happened to me on Friday in Australia in FP1, by going on top of one kerb I get a damaged floor and we didn't have bits to replace it, and it affected probably all weekend," he explained. "Although I was told it had no effect, after reviewing data after the weekend, we think it had bigger effect than we thought," he said.

"The team is trying to get us the best car we can have to drive," he insists. "But on the other hand, in a perfect world you would have fresher parts starting the weekend, plus having some spare parts, and in a good state.

"It is putting the driver in a difficult position," he admitted. "Tomorrow the situation is like it is, you cannot go over the kerbs or you go over the kerbs but the risk is that the car will fall apart, and then you have no parts to fit them.

"We are already lacking performance, and we are adding another factor which is complicating our life. But I know in the factory everyone is working hard. We just need a bit more time to fix the issue."

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