How Kubica proved he was ready for F1 again

Robert Kubica is about to race a Formula 1 car again for the first time in just over eight years. Savour that thought - he certainly is.

Kubica's journey back to F1 after the rallying accident that nearly claimed his life has been dogged by doubts and setbacks. A man once considered by his employers and peers, not by votes and popularity contests, to be among the most talented drivers of his generation has had to prove his own ability all over again, to himself as much as to anyone else.

"Do it properly or not at all" is a mantra drummed into him by his father, since his first days in racing, when the characteristics that defined him on the ultra-competitive Italian karting scene were his incredible raw speed and the austerity of his plain white crash helmet and kart.

The Robert Kubica of today is more open, philosophical, grown-up and reflective than the terse, laser-focused competitor Lewis Hamilton once described as "one of the fastest drivers I've ever raced against".

But that's probably because Robert's spent the past few years methodically navigating around each one of the many obstacles placed in his way.

"It's the correct approach, and it's the approach my father encouraged in the early days," he announces as he guides F1 Racing around his new F1 home on a wintry British afternoon. Williams has offered Kubica a career lifeline: refuge from the F1 wilderness, the chance to clear that final hurdle and continue an extraordinary comeback story.

"My father was the man to inject, let's say, the passion to start in karting. When you're growing up, the sport has a big effect on your character, on how you grow up, and I was brought up with this culture - with this focus on doing things properly, or you're better off not doing them.

"There's no guarantee that you will be doing things properly, but you have to try. You need to be realistic, but I always live with this idea: what is fundamental is to have the knowledge that you've tried everything and tried to do things properly.

"There are better periods and worse periods. There were races where I finished on the podium and was less happy than, say, when I finished ninth. But I knew I'd done everything and that was that."

It was the sheer magnitude of Kubica's accident on the Ronde di Andora rally in February 2011 that defined the protracted timescale of his recovery. At the time, he was at the height of his powers, having won a grand prix for BMW Sauber, worked crowd-pleasing miracles in an underfunded Lotus-Renault, and signed a contract to become Fernando Alonso's team-mate at Ferrari in 2012.

Aside from outright pace, what set Kubica apart from many other drivers was his ability to see not just the big picture of car performance but also the small details - and how those small details contributed to that bigger picture. He's not the kind of driver who believes their job begins when they strap themselves into the car and ends when they climb out.

He has spoken in other interviews of how the rally programme wasn't purely for fun or to engage in competition during F1's off-season; his aim was to experience all manner of different surfaces and augment his sensitivity to changing levels of grip, thereby making him a better grand prix driver.

As he prepares to make his racing comeback at the very top level, attention naturally focuses on his right arm, which was partially severed in the crash and which still has reduced strength and mobility. But his injuries extended far beyond that, requiring around 20 operations - not all of them successful - to repair.

"What do you want to know?" he says with a chuckle as F1 Racing gently broaches the subject.
 "Just to sum it up very briefly, I was injured from my feet up to my shoulder - all the right-hand side. So, yeah, foot, leg, knee, hand, elbow, and all the other bones in between..."

In the spirit of doing it properly or not at all, Kubica has steered himself back to F1 gradually, and he's not here to make up the numbers; he had enough of that when his initial comeback, a shoestring-budget World Rally Championship campaign, petered out after a promising start.

His return journey appeared to have stalled when he had to shutter his eponymous WRC team in 2015, but in private he weathered the setback and took up cycling, a sport whose keenest adherents seek to attain self-improvement through suffering. So he was in great shape when Renault offered him an F1 test out of the blue in the summer of 2017.

"Cycling became a big passion, which is good," he says. "It put me in the... right direction, three or four years ago. It's not that I discovered it, because I knew cycling from the past, but I hadn't done it for five or six years. Not only physically, but mentally it helped me quite a lot.

"You go to places you wouldn't - or couldn't - normally go by car. When you want to have fun with friends you can go with them, or you can ride alone when you just want to think about things. And it's good for another aspect - you can eat what you want!"

Sergey Sirotkin's sponsors were paying for Sirotkin to have F1 seat time with Renault (albeit in a 2012 car, to comply with testing regulations) in June 2017, so it was relatively simple to bolt on an extra day for Robert and modify the gear actuator so he could shift with his left hand alone. F1 Racing attended the day to document proceedings: Kubica clocked up 115 laps and was impressively quick.

He'd been offered the opportunity more as a courtesy than anything else, for many of the senior engineering staff remained from Team Enstone's previous ownership and remembered him fondly. But his performance on the day was enough to persuade those further up the food chain that he could still do the job. Certainly, strength and stamina weren't problems.

Renault furnished another day's running in the 2012 car later that summer, and was sufficiently convinced by that to put him in the 2017 car during an official test at the Hungaroring in August. But although excitement was building in the wider world at the prospect of a Kubica comeback, Renault's enthusiasm dimmed after this excursion.

Although it's difficult to compare pace rigorously at an event such as this, since teams would have been running different programmes with varying goals, his headline lap time, 1.5s off Sebastian Vettel's benchmark, was less impressive than the fact he completed the equivalent of two Hungarian Grand Prix distances. The leap to contemporary machinery was too great to make in one day.

At the post-season Abu Dhabi test, Williams evaluated Kubica for a 2018 race seat but had misgivings about his single-lap pace, which is chiefly a consequence of tyre preparation.

That, and a record-breaking sponsorship purse from SMP, led the team to choose Sirotkin instead, although it saw enough potential in Robert to offer him a gig as test and development driver. Recognising that he needed to consider himself a rookie again, Kubica accepted - subject to certain conditions.

"I didn't really say that I could not come back [to a race drive]," he says, "but it was definitely something where... when I first got back in a Formula 1 car, it was a 2012 car, and I felt at home within three laps. And then when I tested the 2017 car, the technology was in a completely different area with the power unit modes and the tyres.

"Suddenly everything I knew from the past was - I'm not saying 'wrong', but it was different. And you need time to adapt. Sometimes it's easier to learn from zero than to switch from a different way of driving.

"Not many people might have thought of this, but when you're a regular driver you get maybe a couple of changes each year.

"So, just a couple of numbers. The cars when I was racing before were 620kg. Modern cars are 730kg or more. This 110kg has a big effect on how the car behaves, how it operates dynamically and how great the inertia is.

"If I were a regular driver I would get this increase step by step [it went up to 642kg in 2011, 691kg in 2014, then 728kg in 2017] but instead I got it in one shot. Same for the tyres. Even the size of the car - I was driving narrow cars with narrow tyres, then suddenly everything was a lot bigger.

"I felt - not uncomfortable, but that there were many things I had yet to discover. And thanks to the opportunities last year I've had the time, the laps, to discover these things. So, I'm feeling a lot more comfortable and confident now than I was 12 months ago, thanks to the knowledge that 
I've had a chance to store and understand."

After the disappointment of not getting the '18 race seat, Kubica focused on building a case for the following year. Chiefly that meant he would need seat time and he insisted on this forming part of his role.

"One of the fundamental aspects for me was to get the opportunity to drive," says Kubica. "I wasn't interested in going to races and just standing there doing nothing all year. My target over the past few years has been to come back to the highest motorsport category, so 13 months ago, if I'd been given an offer to be a reserve and simulator driver and that's all, I would never have signed.

"For me, last year's opportunity was a step towards achieving what was possible. I definitely wouldn't have kept trying for ages - I gave myself another year and said 'This is a good opportunity for me to be back in F1, of course not as a race driver, but with the chance to drive the car on a few occasions, work with the team and understand modern F1 better.' And I was living my passion.

"F1 can be stressful and sometimes harsh, but it's the highest motorsport category in the world and I'm passionate about motorsport."

A vignette from last year's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix perfectly illustrates Kubica's competitive focus: early in the weekend, F1 Racing understands, he took it upon himself to peel off the stickers covering the Williams cars' Martini decals in compliance with sensibilities in this dry state.

Interrupted in his labours by the mechanics, who understandably wanted to know what on earth he was up to, he responded that the stickers were adding weight to the car so it would be better to scrape off the Martini branding rather than covering it.

Most 'third drivers' would be in line for a P45 for stepping over the line in this way, but Robert was - is - different. He commands the utmost respect of a team which is in the process of its own difficult journey back to the top.

As we walk around the factory, past huge rapid-prototyping machines in which experimental components are taking shape, people drop what they're doing to walk over and greet him warmly. In the race bays his chief mechanics Ben Howard and Gorka Norbarte offer cheery salutations before getting back to work. The affection is palpable.

Williams's then chief technical officer Paddy Lowe admitted late last year that his team had found "the bottom of the trench" competitively, and that it needed a complete change of mindset.

And while Kubica made a compelling case for employment by sourcing a sponsorship deal with the Polish petrochemical company PKN Orlen, perhaps what's in his head is of greater long-term value: that ability to see the big picture and the myriad elements therein.

"Sometimes it is a question of small details," he muses, "although last year we had bigger issues. I always say that as a team you have to operate in such a way that the day you get a car that performs, you are prepared for it and can go out and win or perform well.

"You have to approach each race weekend saying, 'I've done nearly everything but I can still improve, because we can always do better.' We can always find ways to be more efficient, more precise, and then you can be happy and satisfied with what you've achieved. There are no short cuts."

For Williams, Kubica will provide an element of leadership from the cockpit that has been lacking for several seasons. Although getting back to the top level of motorsport has been his goal these past eight years, it's clear he won't rest now he's attained it.

Reaching Formula 1 is not an end in itself; he isn't simply here just to fill a Nomex suit in the annual drivers' photograph on the grid in Melbourne.

"It is real, and I'll start enjoying it once I..." He trails off and pauses thoughtfully before resuming. "You know, in the past, what I've looked forward to are challenges and competition. These things motivate me to work and perform well. And this is something that's been missing. Until now."