Kubica on F1: I have no regrets

Would he have been world champion? That's difficult to say. Was he good enough to be? That's much easier: most would agree he was.

Robert Kubica could be forgiven for being a tad bitter about the way his career has gone, but he isn't. That's not his way.

Inevitably the Pole was ranked high up AUTOSPORT's list of the 25 best drivers who never won the F1 title.

We talked to the new World Rally Championship driver to see what he makes of his F1 career now, and to pick out his best moments.

AUTOSPORT: You have said that you consider 2008 to be one of the greatest years of your career but also one of the most disappointing because BMW did not put maximum effort into trying to win the title. Considering what's happened since, is that an even bigger regret?

Kubica hoped BMW's Montreal one-two would launch a title push © LAT

Robert Kubica: To be honest it was a bigger regret at that time because half of the season I was easily in the battle. I was leading the classification after Canada but I was still quite close even in August.

There was some quite nice stuff in the workshop waiting to be put on the car that would give us another boost with the performance, but for some reason it was not installed in the car. At the time it was giving you a different vision.

To be honest, from one side I need to thank BMW Sauber for giving me this opportunity. But when you are there it's normal you want to try everything. Maybe their priorities were different at that point but I definitely look at it being more positive than negative that year.

AS: Had your F1 career continued uninterrupted, are you confident you would have been able to get into a car good enough to win the world championship and were you good enough to do so?

RK: About the driver I cannot judge it. But the last three years in F1, 2008, 2009 was a very difficult year with BMW for whatever reasons. Even though I'm a very demanding person from my side and I have a lot of time to think about it, when you look at those seasons, there were not many races when I could have done a much better job.

Maybe I was not the most spectacular but my priority was to bring points to the team and I think I have a very good vision of the races and really performed very well. If you look at 2010 I can only see one or two events when I lost one position for my mistakes.

In 17 races I performed really well and only through bad luck in the last qualifying in 2010 in Abu Dhabi did I fail to get into the top 10. Until that point I had always qualified in the top 10.

It was overshadowed by poor weather postponing qualifying an early race day retirement, but Kubica's Suzuka 2010 qualifying lap was a special one © LAT

I did very nice races on circuits like Monaco, Spa, very good races. The best lap of my career was definitely Suzuka when I managed to qualify third but not many people knew we had a problem with the floor, which was damaged. The car was not 100 per cent performing and I thought 'wow'.

It took me two hours to cool down after this lap. Suzuka is one of the old school circuits with not a lot of run-off areas or gravel, so it gives you an additional boost.

I don't know if I could have won the world championship in F1 but definitely I was trying to do my best.

Looking how the seasons developed after my accident it would have been different with the combination of Sebastian [Vettel] and Red Bull and the whole package being very strong. It would have been very difficult but you never know. But I need to focus on what is now.

AS: Ferrari was interested in signing you. How close did come to a deal and do you think you would have ended up there in 2012 or '13?

Kubica was long linked to Ferrari © LAT

RK: It's a bit of a delicate topic. I think I would not have stayed long with the same colours if I had been able to continue my F1 career after 2011. The rest of the sentence you can judge as you want...

AS: You are rated by AUTOSPORT as one of the greatest F1 drivers never to win the world championship. How frustrating is it not to have been able to fulfil your potential in F1?

RK: Formula 1 is a very special sport. Of course when you say it like this it's hard, it feels bad. But on the other hand I had a great opportunity that other talented drivers didn't have. I had a great opportunity to show my skills and work with very professional teams and establish my F1 status as a driver as being very high.

What happened in 2011 wasn't planned and it was a worst-case scenario. But you have to look at it in a positive way. I don't know how many drivers won a grand prix in all F1 history but I am one of them and this is something that makes your life special.

You have to see it in both ways. When I look backwards I see it in a positive way, not a negative way.

There are many drivers who haven't won the championship and I am one of them but I was one of the drivers who was able to win a race and there are many good drivers who were not able to win a race. It's always like this.

When you are new in F1 you always want to win one race. And when you win a race you want to win more.

Alesi and Kubica both count Canadian GP wins as sole F1 victories © LAT

I was somehow always scared. In Canada when I won, I don't know for what reason but we were talking and Jean Alesi was there or I phoned him and he said to me: 'don't be the same as me'.

To be honest this sentence stayed in my head and I said I had to win more but I was not able to win. But that's life.

AS: What do you consider to be your finest race drive in F1?

RK: My best race, wow. There were 12 laps of Canada [2008] when I had to build up the gap to Nick [Heidfeld] because I was on a different strategy. They were definitely a good 12 laps of my life, or whatever number it was! I did a very nice race in Monte Carlo in 2008 in the wet, that was also very good.

You always remember the win but often when I finished seventh or eighth I was more happy than finishing third because you are the man who drives. You are the only person who can judge how you perform but it's difficult to pick up from the outside.

Actually for me the best race ever, I was forgetting, people don't realise but it was in 2008 at Fuji. The car was not there any more. People think it wasn't my best race because after starting on the third row after the start I was first I think because there was a big mess at the first corner. Then Fernando Alonso managed to stay longer with the fuel and I finished second.

I knew the real potential of the car at that point and it wasn't that good so Fuji definitely was the best.