YOU ASK THE QUESTIONS
Which F1 driver was your biggest supporter during your recovery? Yusuf Faqihi, Bahrain
It’s a difficult question, because in the end I did, by myself, decide to go away quite drastically from F1. It wasn’t because I was hiding, it was sort of protection for myself, even to talk to people who were there at the race weekends was giving me strange emotions, strange feelings, so I didn’t have much contact during my recovery. In the beginning, for sure, a lot of people came to visit me at the hospital. Fernando Alonso was one of the first, and he was quite close to me in the beginning.
But then, as I said, people are involved in their own lives and I decided by myself not to get too involved. I was still watching F1 races. I missed it, but I realised that even the small things were giving me these feelings that made me miss it more and that is painful. So it was a strange move from my side, but I think it was necessary.
Do you still play Colin Mcrae Rally? What racing games do you play now? Jagoda Tomala, Poland
I don’t play Colin Mcrae now
– it’s quite an old game. I used to play it and spent a lot of hours with my friends. Now I use iracing. It’s less arcade; I have a simulator at home to train a bit. F1R: Have you got the full set up?
RK: Yeah, but it’s static. The power motor for my steering wheel for force-feedback has, I think, one of the highest loads that can be produced on the market, and I can get it up into the region of GP2, which is more than double that of F1. The idea was to use it for training, but then I was so much involved in the simulator last year in different projects that I’ve used it only a few times. So now I use it with my friends and we have some fun.
What was going through your mind when you had that big crash in Canada 2007? Iqbal Rizal, Malaysia
Nothing really. Everything was happening very fast. I remember once I went off the track the car was launched in the air and what I could see was sky and the final row of the grandstand on the other side of the track! In those moments, nothing goes through your mind, you just realise that probably you will be in the big shit!
And then I didn’t have a clue where I stopped. I remember there was an oil leak, and the first thing I felt was the heat from the oil and then when I was extracted from the car. Then when I realised that everything was okay, and I had only a little pain on my ankle, I said to the doctors “I’m fine” – and they looked at me as if I was in shock. But it was a kind of miracle.
“I HAD ONLY A LITTLE PAIN ON MY ANKLE, I SAID TO THE DOCTORS ‘I’M FINE’ – AND THEY LOOKED AT ME AS IF I WAS IN SHOCK. BUT IT WAS O“A KIND F MIRACLE