Kubica and Ogier quiz each other

One was once the fastest thing in Formula 1, the other is the World Rally Championship's super-dominant Frenchman.

What happens when Robert Kubica and Sebastien Ogier sit down to chew the fat? A fascinating 40 minutes is what happens. Among the highlights: one offering the other a ride in his Formula 1 car, while the other voices typically forthright views on current F1 drivers. Specifically Pastor Maldonado. And then there's the current plight of the World Rally Championship.

It's all here: uncut, unedited and utterly unmissable.

When Robert and Seb sat down and invited AUTOSPORT along...

Sebastien Ogier: I've never driven an F1 car, but of course it would be nice.

Robert Kubica: You can drive mine. OK, I'm missing the engine, but if I ask BMW I think they will help. It's the car from 2006, when I had my first podium. I wouldn't fit any more, but I think you'd be OK. I am too fat, too big.

SO: Oh, come on...

RK: No seriously, it was a very small car.

SO: I'm not so small!

I would like to discover the feeling of a Formula 1 car. I wouldn't say I would like to race - I think it's a bit late for this, and I didn't do all of the junior formulas. But to do a test, yes, I'd like that.

I would like to test with the old one though, the new one seems to be slower. Although I'm sure, for me, it would still be OK! But now, they are the same speed as [Formula Renault] 3.5?

RK: No, faster. Much faster.

SO: Not so much.

RK: They are still good cars. It's not the same as it was in the past, but still they are fast cars.

Question to Ogier: do you think Robert will go back to the circuits?

SO: I don't know. Ask him! Unfortunately, I think it will be hard for him now, but I don't know what his wish is.

RK: I think everybody knows I would like to. I would give everything to drive in F1, but now the complication is too big. It's not possible. I could go back to the circuits with some other series, especially touring cars, GT or DTM.

But for some reason I chose rallying and it will be just wasting time to go back to the circuits now. But I miss the racing even more now than I did a year ago. That's normal.

Question to Kubica: do you remember the first time you saw Ogier? What did you think?

RK: I remember him driving in the JWRC. I was following rallies, but I was quite busy in F1. You always follow the results, but never that close. In all my life I had only been twice to watch rallying - in Sardinia in 2007 and then in Catalunya. Actually, three rallies. I was also in Corsica when the Suzuki [SX4 WRC] came for the first time; that was an interesting car to watch at shakedown! I followed Jan [Kopecky] because I know him pretty well.

Question to Kubica: what about next year?

RK: I don't know. It's too early. I have a lot to learn and a lot to discover. I also have a lot of bad moments to live in order to learn. I have a new goal after the accident and I would like to achieve it. It depends on the conditions of the WRC and how I will be able to compete. It's no secret that you need a lot of experience and I need a lot of time to learn; I am coming from zero.

I can use 10 per cent of my experience from circuits. Maybe a bit more on Tarmac, but on gravel I drove for the first time last March after just 150 kilometres of testing. It's quite a lot to learn and for that reason I need more time and some guarantees, otherwise I'll never achieve what I want to achieve.

SO: What would you like to achieve?

RK: I will never get close to the level in rallying that I had on circuits; on circuits I'd been there for 20 years. But I would like to get closer to where I was on the circuit from a driving point of view - that's what I'm looking for.

Often you can see only results from the outside, but there are many times when you get internal, personal satisfaction even though the results are not there. This came in F1, in karting and it also happened last year for me in the rallies. One of the highlights last year was not about results or anything like that, it was getting the offer from Citroen to drive the factory car this year.

Eighty per cent of rallies are gravel and I only had eight rallies on gravel in my life. It didn't work, we couldn't make it work, but to have the offer to drive for the factory that won nearly everything in this sport in the last 10 years... that was something special.

SO: I have a question...

RK: Now we have started!

SO: What do you miss from racing and reverse: what do you get in rallying you didn't get in racing?

RK: It's a completely different world. In F1 you get everything at the maximum: performance from the car, the organisation, the teams, the people. Everybody is working much more on the details. I grew up with people working on the very small details and then you come to rallies where it matters, but it's not such an important thing - especially at the beginning.

My mentality is trying to maximise and improve everything I can. I have to understand it's too early for me to do this in rallying. In order for me to fight at the top like Seb, you need to work on the very small details and be very precise - but on the circuit, you go nowhere without these details. On the circuit, on one lap of five kilometres, three tenths of a second is the difference between an average driver and an F1 driver.

SO: Without the right car in F1 you go nowhere, but in rallying, like you say, it's much more about experience. The driver still has a much bigger part to play in the car, I think.

RK: To win championships, you still need the whole package. One tenth [of a second] per kilometre slower on the circuit is a lot, but in rallies having a car which is half a second per kilometre slower means you are maybe not winning the championship, but you can still fight for it.

Half a second on the circuit would make you last. OK, there are different parameters, but some teams are paying a lot of money for a driver who is giving you two tenths per lap.

Question to Kubica: why rallying?

RK: After a difficult two years, this was a better way to come to the sport - not as a driver, but as a person. I needed something to keep my head off the circuit and something to keep me busy.

For sure, rallying is much more intense than, for example, DTM. In DTM, in one year I would have maybe eight days of testing and for sure many PR days - this is the part I don't like! And then 10 races, but the races mean you leave home on Thursday and are back home on Sunday evening.

Rallies keep me more busy and this is what I was looking for after a difficult period, and to be honest this was one of the biggest influences that made me choose rallies.

Question to Ogier: do you have any ambition to go circuit racing one day?

SO: Not at the moment.

RK: You are still too young!

SO: Too young and in a way too old!

RK: First he would like to win [the WRC title] 10 times... then go to the circuit.

SO: No, that's really not true. I cannot say I have a career plan, that I want to stay some years in rallying and then do something else. I will just take it from my feelings and the pleasure I take from the sport.

Today, I have a lot still to do in rallying and I get a lot of pleasure. I like the experience in GT races, I like this as an extra, but my motivation is still in rallies.

At the moment I'm in a really good position, driving for the best team. It's here that I am strongest - I don't say I am the strongest in the WRC, but if I went into racing then I would have a lot to learn.

Maybe the gap [to move to circuit racing] is not as big as for Robert to move the other way. It takes a long time to build the experience of rallies - you only get it by competing and doing rallies and rallies and rallies all the time. On tracks, you can learn the cars more quickly; the tracks are different, but you can still learn...

RK: They are 10 corners.

SO: It's less experience.

RK: And you have free practice!

Question to Ogier: could you be interested in Le Mans?

SO: Le Mans is fantastic, it's one of the most famous races in the world. And now there is a big fight between the manufacturers, the entries are high and the competition is tight. I heard it's maybe going a little bit too much [towards] engineering and taking away a little bit from the drivers, but, yeah, it could be great experience. But at the moment, it's not an immediate plan.

Question to Ogier: what about rallycross, or X Games?

SO: Rallycross is something which is growing and also something I could try for fun. At the moment, what I don't like is that it's a little bit too much of a lottery. It's about who survives the first corner in the race. The car is nice, there's a lot of power and there are some really nice tacks where you have a lot of fun - but I'm not sure I like it in the long-term. I don't know, I have to try it before I really talk about it.

Question to Ogier: what do you like and dislike about racing?

SO: What I like...

RK: Easy life!

SO: Yeah, actually, you don't wake up so early in the morning.

RK: You never have to wake up at five in the morning!

SO: And you stay in the same place with no long, boring road sections; and the adrenalin on the start and when you are trying to overtake somebody can be really fun. But it can also be really bad: if you make a mistake in rallying, it's just because of you, it's not because somebody pushes you off the track, and that's a disadvantage to racing.

RK: But you can always push somebody else as well!

SO: Yeah, but your race doesn't really depend on you. Someone can f**k your race, even if you are doing the perfect job.

RK: You can even win the race like this! OK, I'm joking...

SO: What I love in rallying is the diversity. Racing on gravel and in places I love like Finland or on snow in Sweden, it's really a big pleasure to drive the car there. I never experienced Formula 1 and I'm sure the tracks are nice and, sure, the speed into the corners is something you will never experience anywhere else. Of course, that would be nice to try, but as well, I'm sure the sensations we have in Finland are also something really special and I think this can be on the same level as what you get in an F1 car.

Question to Ogier: what do you think the recognition is like for you compared with F1 drivers?

SO: They are much better-known stars in Formula 1 also because, like Robert mentioned, everything is more professional about the TV coverage. Bernie [Ecclestone] has done a good job and made a really big championship, a worldwide event that everybody knows. Rallying has stayed more known by the fan and so hopefully somebody is working on this to make it better for us. It's also more difficult to show our sport to the public than F1.

Question to Kubica: is that fair?

RK: It's like discussing which has better sportsmen: volleyball or basketball. They are completely different. The power of F1 is 100 times bigger. There are maybe not more fans, but there are more casual people who switch on and watch on Sunday. This is first because rallying is nearly impossible to follow, but also because they are harder to view.

The reality is that the economy went down in motorsport in the last five years, but strangely in F1 there are new tracks costing hundreds of millions of euros, new countries wanting to host races and paying the money to get the organisation, and this is the power of F1. Those countries are getting something back.

SO: Yes, but contrary to that, there are not so many paid drivers in F1. At the end of the grid there are still some drivers who need to pay.

RK: How many pay drivers you have in rallying? Four, five?

SO: Yeah, but compared to the image - everything is so much bigger in Formula 1, in the end it's not normal that you still have drivers who pay to be there with sponsorship or whatever.

RK: This is a very delicate topic. There are many teams struggling who need sponsors, but there is a borderline where we say 'pay driver'. If Ferrari has Santander and they want a Spanish driver and that Spanish driver is [Fernando] Alonso, who is one of the best drivers, and they get rid of Kimi [Raikkonen] before the end of his contract just to make it work - are we calling Fernando a pay driver? Er, no.

If there is [Pastor] Maldonado, who has...

SO: Yeah, but Maldonado is a pay driver because he's not a good driver.

RK: Ah!

SO: Oh, come on. He's just a crazy guy and he's stupid and I have some examples to prove it.

RK: He's err...

SO: Oh, come on, don't tell me you believe he's a good one.

RK: You know, I don't know how many drivers have won F1 races and he did it. Some days he can be very good, then if we say, is a driver consistent and can they win a championship across 18 races, then we can argue. If we say he can drive fast, he can drive fast.

The big difference people forget is this: if I get a team and I have a very good driver with no budget and a driver three tenths slower with a big sponsor, I take the driver with the sponsor because I can invest his money in developing the car and I can improve the car much more than this three tenths and it gives benefits for both drivers.

In F1 the development is huge - if you have the best car in the first race you are on the front row and if you stop working on the car then, at the last race you will be in last position. You need to improve the car during the year by around two seconds per lap and this is huge and that's where the money goes. This budget question is much more complicated than it looks.

Question to Ogier: did you give Robert any advice on rallying?

RK: Stay on the road!

SO: A few times we discuss things a little bit and if he has questions then I can speak with him easily - he is a nice guy, but what can I say? He knows how to drive the car fast, he has proved this and he has proved he needs time to make it.

We all had this time; this was 2009 for me, when I was crashing a little bit too much. It's always difficult to find the balance and find the limit. Sometimes you have to go over the limit and that's what happened for him at the start of the season. But, you know, he arrived in Formula 1 not for nothing, he has the skills to drive fast and that's not the question. With some more experience I'm sure he can do well.

Question for Kubica: when Raikkonen was rallying, his main problem was pacenotes - is that a problem for you?

RK: I think you always try to improve your pacenotes. There is no secret that experience helps with pacenotes, experience is fundamental; you can be the best driver with the best car, tyres and engine, but if your pacenotes are wrong, you go nowhere.

You have to find the right way of writing notes and you have to believe them. As always at the top level, if you are very confident and you know what you are doing then you gain a lot of time and more confidence. Confidence at a high level of motorsport is really important.

SO: It's difficult to compare our systems because of the language. You make yours in Polish?

RK: They are Polish, but I have a few words in Italian, English.

SO: It helps if you have somebody to follow in your language. I made my start from [Sebastien] Loeb and this was immediately a good base. I developed the system from there and today he could not use mine and I could not use his, but it's a good start.

RK: What is most important is that the notes give you a picture of what's happening. That doesn't mean Seb sees it the same way as I do. What matters is the result. I know on gravel, it's very difficult for me. For example, I tested on the same road in Poland as last year - I compared my notes from last year and I could see that I was scared of every stone on the road.

This is coming from 20 years of driving on the circuits, which are flat. In F1, if you take the kerb wrong, you might damage your suspension, so when I see these stones in the stage...

SO: You need to know the limit of the car.

RK: And a lot of time I was staying off the line because of the rocks. On the recce I was not seeing the cuts, but now I'm more used to looking for these. Since March last year I have done 20 new rallies, all of them long rallies and I have to write new notes for every one of them. There is so much to think about, I can't get it all down. Imagine for somebody who has never seen a bump - whenever there's a bump in F1 drivers are complaining, 'It hurts!'

But here after Mexico I watched the onboards. I was at home and very disappointed at what had been a very bad rally; OK, the pace was very good, but I crashed. Anyway, I looked at the onboard - very narrow, twisty, tricky stage - and I opened the onboard from Spa 2010. In one picture I see everything I knew for 20 years and in the other...

SO: I think it's impossible to imagine the limit and what these cars can absorb through the suspension. It takes time. It would also be the same for me to understand how it's possible to take this curve so fast with a Formula 1 car.

RK: The difference is you have 200 laps to try. Also on the circuit you have data from the other drivers - you know this corner is possible. The question is how to do it, 3km/h faster, 10km/h faster, then you touch the limit and it's 'Oh f**k', but it works.

If you go off, most of the time you come back off the run-off. You can take it step by step and that makes it a bit easier.

In rallies, you don't have 20 passes. I'm not going to drive the stage 20 times and then we start. Marcus [Gronholm] came to my Sweden test. I drove 12 passes of the stage with my co-driver until I remembered the road perfectly.

After five kilometres he said, 'I came for nothing, I don't know what to say.' But I said, 'I know Marcus, but this is my 12th pass, I know how to do it. I need to do it with just two passes, but I cannot do this with the tools I have.' The most important tool - the experience - is missing. This is not just about driving fast. I know Kimi was very fast.

SO: Not as fast as you on gravel. He never understood gravel. On Tarmac he was.

RK: It's so different. When I was seven years old everybody told me, 'Less steering angle, faster you go and never opposite steering angle to the corner.' So you have 20 years of operating in this area. When you see gravel... Last year I was doing everything too late, by the time the car was turning I was having to load up the tyres and the suspension too much.

SO: You have to anticipate much more.

RK: You do. In F1, you look at the steering wheel and the car is already turning. The car turns immediately. Your brain has to recalibrate, but not by a little - to the complete opposite direction.

Question to Ogier: how long does Robert need to make it to the top? Five years?

SO: No, I don't think he needs five years. The experience he got last year is not bad, WRC2 is not so far from WRC.

RK: My driving was far off!

SO: Yeah, but you saw the events in the championship. I think with two full seasons in WRC after that, normally you are able to fight at the top. For me, I did some small rallies before and then after two seasons in WRC I was on a good pace.

Of course, I was making small mistakes and these stop when you have more experience, but I would say two full seasons is enough. The problem for him is that it's two hard seasons because he wasn't doing rallies before and it's good to get some smaller rallies in to work with pacenotes.

RK: Twenty years of circuits is penalising me. When I started, I was writing the notes for the corner I saw, but, especially on gravel, when I came to the corner it was not there -the line was straight.

SO: That's experience. For me, I still write the notes really precise to what you see in the corner.

RK: You need the vision and I have completely the wrong vision. It's coming, but last year the lack of vision cost me a big roll in Azores. I just was not used to following the lines to see where the others go. I go where I want to go; on circuits it works like this. On gravel, you have to follow the others.

SO: Also, you are used to having the perfect line nearly all of the time.

RK: That's true.

SO: It's like talking about opening the road on gravel rallies, it's nearly always worst - the line is nearly always shit.

RK: But you have to follow it. I have many drivers saying, 'I saw the line, he was getting wide...' I didn't know what they were talking about. Now I know.

Question to both: which are the bigger heroes, F1 or rally drivers?

SO: It's impossible. We both have a lot of respect for each other. We know you need to work hard to reach the top. We discussed this, it's a completely different world. I think most F1 drivers think we are crazy, but I don't think we are more crazy than them. OK, sometimes the environment is not so safe, but the speed is not so high as on the track.

RK: I don't think you can compare. In 2012 I was doing a Ford test on Tarmac, it was organised on a circuit. I was doing a run, then Jari-Matti [Latvala] in the same car. I was doing better times and he was curious to see what I was doing. Some people were surprised, but I said, 'No, you put me in my jungle. If you put me on the stage then I would like to be one second per kilometre off his pace.'

SO: You learn to work with very small details and to make each lap work; we don't develop the same skills.

RK: You are building up runners, but marathon and sprinters do different programmes. They build different skills and the brain has to work in different ways. It's not just four wheels and steering wheel...

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