Kubica on his latest F1 challenge
IT HAS BEEN A BIG CHALLENGE FOR ME TO GET INTO F1. IT WILL PROBABLY BE AN EVEN BIGGER CHALLENGE, FROM A SPORTING POINT OF VIEW, TO MAKE SURE I’M DELIVERING WHAT IS EXPECTED OF ME.
Against all odds, the popular Pole is back in Formula 1. Can this fairytale have a happy ending?
SCOTT MITCHELL
ROBERT KUBICA ended his last Formula 1 season as one of the most-talked-about drivers on the grid. He finished eighth in the championship in 2010, but was rated the second-best performer of the year by Autosport and ranked fifth in our poll of the team bosses’ best drivers. How he would fare in his next campaign was due to be a major subplot of the season.
To be fair, it still is – it’s just that it’s happening eight years later than it was supposed to.
Kubica will start the 2019 campaign as he ended ’10: as one of the main storylines. It is a tale of epic proportions: an incredible, unbelievable, impossible journey from almost-amputee to F1 racer once again. That Kubica has made it back to F1, and the fact that almost eight years have passed since his life-altering crash, makes it easy to forget, or dismiss, the severity of the injuries he sustained when he slid into a barrier on a right-hand turn during a national rally in Italy in February 2011. The left side of his Skoda Fabia ran along the barrier, pushed one length back and exposed the leading edge of the next segment, which pierced the engine compartment and went into the car. Kubica’s injuries were numerous, and severe: multiple fractures down most of the right of his body and sub-amputation of the right forearm, which means losing it completely was a possible outcome. He arrived at hospital “presenting an extremely complex trauma”, according to hand specialist Dr Igor Rossello, who assisted in the first seven-hour surgery in a bid to prevent the loss of Kubica’s right hand and to recuperate its severed main nerves.
What followed was an immensely long, painful and often interrupted recovery process. Reading Kubica’s brutally honest assessment of the darkest moments in that time, when he spoke to Autosport in 2014, revealed the extent of how hard he found it to have his F1 dream ripped away from him, and how unlikely it was that he would ever get it back.
Against all odds, though, he has. And as he puts it now: “I see
I WANT A DRIVER WHO IS REALLY PUSHING EVERYONE IN THE FACTORY. ROBERT IS EXACTLY THAT MENTALITY
it’s a story which probably nobody has believed. The only one that probably never gave up was myself and the people around me. But we all knew that it might be something unachievable and this day shows that, somehow, nothing is impossible.”
Kubica’s stunning comeback is only partially successful, of course. There is little doubt that even making it onto the grid with Williams, after a year as its development driver and after two rejections for a 2018 drive – from the Grove team and Renault – is an immense triumph. But in Kubica’s own words, being competitive and making the most of being back is a new challenge entirely: “I’m happy that one difficult period is ending, but my feet are on the ground and I know what is coming next is a big challenge from a sporting point of view.”
Winning over Williams was not the work of a moment, and Kubica was not alone in trying to bag the seat alongside Formula 2 champion George Russell. It required the support of a decent financial package, believed to be around €12million, and as a result Polish fuel company PKN ORLEN will have branding on the rear wing, nose, airbox and both mirrors of the 2019 Williams challenger.
But Williams also insists that it needs a driver of Kubica’s experience and spirit as it bids to drag itself out of the hole it fell into in 2018, when the team recorded the worst result in its history by finishing last in the constructors’ championship.
Deputy team principal Claire Williams says she is completely convinced by Kubica’s ability to be competitive, “especially from his work ethic”. “I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with him, and to see how committed he is to improving as a team has been really positive,” says Williams, who thinks her squad needs some of Kubica’s “fighting spirit”.
“He’s in the garage all the time, but then his determination to follow up and see how developments come through, and make sure we are doing what we need to do back in the factory to develop a better racing car, is really impressive. I want to hear back from him next year in the car – I want a driver who is really pushing everyone back in the factory to deliver the best racing car they can for Sunday afternoon. And Robert is exactly of that mentality.”
Kubica will need to be more than just a development driver in 2019, though. It is not the case that he can afford to be the brains that helps Williams progress in the background and Russell leads its on-track charge. Were that all Kubica needed to do, Williams would just keep him in a development role. Were that all Kubica wanted to do, he would have accepted Ferrari’s offer of a simulator-based job.
It’s tough to judge exactly where Kubica’s abilities are now, but it is fair to say that he is not the same driver who won the 2008 Canadian Grand Prix and was such a star in his last F1 campaign. That is not opinion, but based on the that fact Kubica’s rehabilitation now as a left-handed man, and by extension a left-handed driver, means he is simply not driving the same as before.
Arguably he doesn’t need to be as good as he was before. Kubica was considered world champion material, so even if he is only back to a fraction below that level that would still put him ahead of most drivers on the grid. The question should not be ‘will he be as good?’, but rather ‘how close will he be to that level?’. Any further than a fraction off it and he could start to look very ordinary, for this is elite sport and the level is immensely high.
Kubica believes the one-year delay with his return, having been “partially” ready to race in F1 in 2018, has helped that.
“Last year gave me more time to learn and it’s true that driving an F1 car in testing is helpful, but you don’t learn everything,” he says. “It’s more about discovering, not learning. All drivers have to do it with the new cars, the new tyres, with the new systems. I think
this is a perfect moment for me and that’s why I decided to go for it.
“I have to be realistic, and I know it will not be easy. It has been a big challenge for me to get into Formula 1 – it will probably be an even bigger challenge, from a sporting point of view, to make sure I’m delivering what is expected from my side. But I’m not scared at all. I’m ready and excited.”
Kubica will be one of seven grand prix winners on the grid this year, and have more starts to his name than almost half the field – 76 more than the driver on the other side of the Williams garage, for starters. Despite that, the Pole and his team reason that he will be more like a rookie in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
He logged 1986km of testing with Williams in 2018, added to 1333km across his Yas Marina and Hungaroring ’17 outings with Williams and Renault respectively. That’s a grand total of 3319km of driving in modern F1 machinery. It’s fractionally higher than Russell’s count (2750km of testing, and 270km from Friday
FP1 outings in ’17) but, to put Kubica’s testing experience into the context of his ‘first’ F1 career, Kubica racked up 21,105km of racing laps alone. When you consider the massive difference between the cars Kubica drove from 2006-10 and those in
ALL I CARE ABOUT IS MY JOB AND WHAT I’M DOING. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOMEONE JUDGING YOU
the current V6 turbo-hybrid era, the relevance of Kubica’s experience is dimmed somewhat.
So, should we judge him as a grand prix winner, a veteran of 76 starts and the man who Ferrari signed to drive alongside Fernando Alonso for 2012 – or as a rookie?
“Honestly, I don’t care,” says Kubica. “All I care about is my job and what I am doing. There will always be someone judging you and in different ways. In Australia, I am more the rookie driver than the one who has already done five seasons, because F1 has changed so much.
“What helps me is that I lived this sport on such a high level, so I experienced what it means to be an F1 driver and what it means to race against the top drivers. I hope that this experience will help me to achieve the levels which I would like to and this is the goal.
“I am more like a rookie if you were to ask me if I knew how the tyres would work if I was following someone, because I wouldn’t know. When you are testing, you would do it alone. There is a mix of things but I’m pretty sure that I can work on myself, work together with the team and prepare well for the start of 2019.
“I think the experience will help but there are still many
IF I THOUGHT I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DRIVE COMPETITIVELY FAST I WOULD NOT BE HERE
things I have to discover.”
Claire Williams agrees that it is fair to view Kubica as rookie for the start of the season. As well as having no knowledge of how the tyres behave in traffic, he will need to get used to the demands of race distances again and adjust to the loss of downforce when racing these cars. He must also get back into the groove of racing altogether. Kubica was WRC2 champion in 2013 and competed in the top tier of the World Rally Championship, showing zero fear or hesitation in returning to the discipline that almost killed him, but his circuit-racing experience is limited to a couple of GT outings. He hasn’t competed in single-seaters at all since the 2010 Abu Dhabi GP.
“I remember when Robert was in F1 and the excitement around him then, but it has been a long time since that period of his life,” Williams cautions. “This generation of the cars is very different. This generation of the sport is very different.
“I would consider Robert more of a rookie than someone who has driven in this sport for five years. He hasn’t raced these cars yet and it’s going to take him as much as any new driver coming into the sport. It’s going to take a few races to get up to speed.
“But knowing Robert, his work ethic, his tenacity and determination, I don’t doubt that it will take a very short period to get to the point that he wants to get to.”
If it feels like the odds are overwhelmingly against Kubica making a major impact on his F1 comeback, typically for the man himself he is not bothered by that at all. Are you going to judge him? He doesn’t care. Do you think he’ll get beaten by Russell? He doesn’t care. Do you think he should stay away unless he’s going to be the driver of championship-challenging calibre we saw nine years ago? He really doesn’t care.
“From a driving point of view, it is very simple,” says Kubica. “You just need to wait two months and you will see. If I thought I will not be able to drive competitively fast I would not be here.
If I do my job well, I’m sure everybody will be happy.”
It wouldn’t be surprising if the thing that Kubica is looking forward to the most about the race season starting is people no longer asking the same questions about his limitations or the concerns he has, or how he will get on. He’s made it clear that
“if I was a team principal I would also have doubts”, but also that he is not scared by the challenge. Kubica beat death, survived an amputation scare and overcame immense physical and emotional torment just to even be around a race track again. With that in mind, it does feel nonsensical to think he would be worried by getting back to what he does best.
Assuming, of course, that being a top-class F1 driver is still the thing he does best.