Kubica’s comeback would be remarkable

HE wasn’t long underway when disaster struck. A loss of a control saw the young Pole career into a church wall during the Ronde di Andora. The accident left his Skoda Fabia in ruins and his Formula 1 career along with it.

It took the Italian authorities over an hour to extract him from the car and by the time they did the loss of blood was substantial. Even more significant was the damage done to his arm and to his hand.

Some reports indicated that his right hand was largely detached from the rest of his arm. It’s something of a small miracle that, thanks to the work of the medics, he managed to retain it and the use of it.

At the time even that must have felt a small consolation. Mere weeks before the start of the 2011 season, Robert Kubica’s career was, to all intents and purposes, over. The level of shock, horror and disappointment must have been near overwhelming.

There had to have been plenty self recrimination too. What was he doing there at all in the first place? At a minor rally in northern Italy, while his colleagues were resting themselves and preparing for the season ahead, starting with testing later that week?

He was there because that’s what he did. He pushed to the limit, he pushed himself and this time he pushed too hard. An insatiable love for speed was the making of him and now it was the breaking of him.

Overnight Kubica went from the next big thing – spoken of in the same breath as Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso – to the forgotten man of Formula 1.

That’s just the way it goes, the world moves on, with or without him the next Grand Prix would take place and the one after that and the one after that again. If his name was spoken it was with regret for a talent unfulfilled.

Kubica’s later success in rallying – he won the 2013 World Rally Championship-2, taking five wins along the way – showed that he retained a lot of his natural speed and had lost none of his bravery.

Still the thought of him making a return to Formula

1 seemed little more than a pipe dream. A rally car – much like a touring car – can be modified in a way that a single seater never could.

And, yet, here we are six years after his initial accident and it seems more likely as not that Kubica will be lining up along side his former colleagues next March for the start of the

2018 season.

If it comes to pass – and it remains an if at this stage

– it will be amongst the most remarkable sporting comebacks in the history of sport. Kubica, as we’ve said, retains his arm and retains his hand, but the damage remains substantial, their functionality is necessarily limited.

To get himself into this position Kubica has had to put himself through a punishing fitness regime, with physio and occupational therapy no doubt playing a major part in his rehabilitation.

Even with all that hard work his return to the grid was a massive long shot until quite recently. When Renault granted him a test earlier this year in an older car it was seen as little more than a good-will and PR exercise (Kubica was a Renault driver in 2011).

Kubica’s pace was such, however, that he was granted further time in the car and after the Hungarian Grand Prix even got a test in the 2017 car with strong rumours that the French squad were looking for a new driver.

Renault’s decision to instead poach Carlos Sainz seemed to suggest the pipe dream remained just that. As well as he’d done to give himself a chance, the gap just couldn’t be bridged.

All of which has made his emergence at Williams all the more unexpected. On Tuesday afternoon Kubica took to the track at Abu Dhabi at the end of season tyre-test – again in a 2017 car – and completed over one hundred laps of the Yas Marina circuit.

It was an impressive display of physical endurance and, even accounting for the vagaries of conditions, fuel levels and tyre compounds, he appeared to set a pretty decent pace in his FW40.

Really there’s little more he can do to prove to Williams that he’s the man for the job. The questions which remain are largely answerable at this stage. With limited functionality in his right hand and arm – and he was forceful in comments in Yas Marina that he wasn’t driving “one-handed” – how will he react to certain situations?

Will he be able to react as quickly or as effectively in the opening lap of a race with a number of cars around him all making their own independent decisions? There’s a world of difference between driving on a relatively deserted test-track and driving in traffic during a Grand Prix.

It’s a huge decision for Williams to make and maybe they would be better off signing Paschal Wehrlein or whoever else, but where’s the fun in that? If Kubica is anywhere near as good as he once was it’s a risk worth taking.

Even if you retain a certain level of scepticism you cannot help but be swept up in the romance of it all. We could all do with a feel good story, why not

this one?