The man Formula 1 will miss most in 2017

When Formula 1 reconvenes in Melbourne, Felipe Massa will be on hand, back in the Williams he never wanted to vacate in the first place, but many paddock fixtures will not. I allude not to Jost Capito, who departed from McLaren almost before he had arrived, but to such as Ron Dennis, Fred Vasseur, Pat Symonds, Jenson Button - as well as reigning world champion Nico Rosberg, and overwhelmingly Bernie Ecclestone, who ran the whole thing for more than four decades.

Dennis, as we know, lost control of McLaren some time ago when Mansour Ojjeh and the Crown Prince of Bahrain declined to renew his contract, while Vasseur left Renault after a long battle with Cyril Abiteboul, most feeling that the wrong man was pushed out.

Symonds's planned retirement was brought forward a year by Williams, where Paddy Lowe - his gardening leave from Mercedes pruned by Toto Wolff's need to sign Valtteri Bottas - assumes control of all technical aspects of the Williams group, as well as becoming a shareholder and director.

Already Lowe has a significant history with Williams, not least as the man behind the active suspension system that made the FW14B way superior to its rivals, and took Nigel Mansell to the world championship in 1992. Thereafter Lowe worked at McLaren for 20 years before - to the surprise of Ross Brawn - being appointed executive director of Mercedes in 2013.

Perhaps remarkably, Lowe's departure from Mercedes was not at his own behest, in the sense that when it came time to discuss a new contract (for 2017 on), he found that Wolff's estimation of his financial value differed rather widely from his own. True, James Allison was in the wings, but Lowe, the essence of calm in what could be a volatile environment, had a genius for correlating the technical aspects of the team, and I suspect that, as time goes by, his absence will make ever more apparent his worth.

Although with Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo, Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Jr firmly contracted for 2017, this is not a vintage year for the drivers' market, still it's interesting to note that while Lance Stroll will be the sole debutant in Melbourne, only three of the 10 teams - Ferrari, Red Bull, Toro Rosso - remain unchanged.

Nico Hulkenberg is the new man at Renault, and if it pleases me to see him - at last - in a factory team, I'll admit that mention of Renault still occasionally induces in me a certain wistfulness, which came strongly to the surface recently when Sky re-ran the 2010 Australian Grand Prix. The race was won by Button, but second - for Renault - was Robert Kubica, after memorably getting the best of a scrap with Jenson's McLaren team-mate, Lewis Hamilton.

It was a year later that Kubica, indulging in his favourite hobby, suffered dreadful injuries - notably the partial severing of his right forearm - in a minor Italian rally. Although he was restored to health, and went rallying again, the legacy of the arm injury, he said, would almost certainly rule out a return to F1.

Now it has been announced that Kubica will drive in the top class of the World Endurance Championship for the Kolles team in 2017. "I've been looking for something as close to F1 as possible," he said, "and this is exactly what I've found in LMP1."

Many who had dealings with Colin Kolles in F1 will murmur, 'Well, you can't have everything', but it's good that Kubica finds himself back in a properly quick race car.

He has been missed in the F1 world, and not only for his droll sense of humour: his pal Alonso once told me, in terms of talent, he thought Kubica the best, and the belief was that, after Renault, he would go to Ferrari. Had he not hit that guardrail in February 2011, who knows what he might have achieved in the last six years?

As it is, Kubica will always have but one grand prix victory to his name, this for BMW in Montreal in 2008. At the same circuit, a year earlier, he survived a huge accident, following a touch with Jarno Trulli's Toyota at the approach to the hairpin. Robert's car hit a concrete barrier at close to 190mph before somersaulting back across the track and into a wall on the other side.

Astonishingly, after a single night in hospital, he was discharged, and although precluded from racing at Indianapolis the following weekend, he nevertheless showed up there for a press conference. When someone started going through the details of the shunt, Kubica interrupted him: "I know - I was there..."

He was similarly laconic when talking to me about it. "The problem was that all four wheels were in the air, so there was no deceleration at all. The first wall I just shaved really - but then the second impact was quite big, believe me. I was still travelling at 260km/h [162mph] - so from 260 to zero into the wall was not ideal."

At Indy in 2014 Dario Franchitti asked me if I'd seen the in-car footage of Kubica on the Janner Rally, and I said no. He rolled his eyes: "You just won't believe it..." I watched it on YouTube, and didn't.

By any standards, Kubica was always considered brave, but this footage is even more startling than Sebastien Loeb ascending Pikes Peak. For one thing, it's raining; for another, it's at night - and on top of that his M-Sport Ford Fiesta has lighting problems, one lamp flopping around uselessly, occasionally blinding him. All this at up to 130mph.

Even more fearless, you would have to say, was the man next to him, Maciej Szczepaniak, who somehow retained the gift of speech and continued to read the pace notes before presumably retiring to a darkened room with a bottle of scotch.

Kubica won this round of the European Rally Championship, and what makes it the more remarkable is that he took the lead on this, the 18th and final special stage.

I suggest you check out the footage below and rejoice that Robert, if not in F1, is still around.