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Robert Kubica believes Formula 1’s established teams should stop spending so much time scrutinizing the performance of the grid’s new squads and just accept the inevitable traffic problems that will crop up around Monaco.

With Lotus, Virgin and Hispania lapping between three and five seconds off the front-running pace during Thursday practice on the street circuit, pre-race predictions that congestion would be a key factor when all 24 cars run on the tight track at the same time in Q1 and the race appeared to be confirmed.

Renault driver Kubica, however, believes the new squads should be cut some slack and points out that the fastest new entrant Lotus wasn’t lapping much slower than his BMW team did last year when it struggled around the bumpy 2.1-mile track.

“We have to accept [them] and I welcome new teams,” he told reporters in Monaco

“To be honest I don’t know why we concentrate too much on them. They are doing their job.

“When I saw lap times, actually Lotus was not far away from the pace of BMW of here last year…so not so bad I think.

But asked if the new teams' pace was still a concern given the times being set by the Hispanias were slower than the quickest GP2 cars also in action this weekend, he said: “I think we [BMW] were also slower last year than the pole position of GP2, or very close weight corrected. So you cannot ban someone to race here.

“If someone [individually] is struggling, that is another issue, but everybody knew there would be a risk with the new team that they will most probably not be up to the pace.

“But this was known before the start of the season so to be honest I don’t know why people are making such a big topic about it.

Kubica was one of the stars of Thursday’s practice session, impressively hustling his Renault to top-six positions, and insisted that while getting a clear lap at Monaco remains a challenge, the problem wasn’t particularly bad this time.

He pointed out the situation wasn’t an easy one for either the faster, or slower, runners to manage and said that everyone just had to get on and try to make the best of it.

“Actually when you get lucky in a good place, space is quite smooth. But as usual in Monaco it was quite tricky,” the Pole said.

“To be honest it was not too bad; I believe for the guys which are driving the new cars it is also not easy to already keep the cars on the track and additionally moving out of the way where it is very narrow – it is not easy for them and it is not easy for us.

“To be honest it was not so bad. Sometimes you get lucky and have five laps in a row free; sometimes you get unlucky and you get stuck in between slow cars. So that’s how it is.

“We shouldn’t do too much talk about it – that’s how it is.”