From the Pulpit

Is Robert Kubica the next Schumi? According to some BMW people, believe it or not, that's exactly what he is. According to more grounded witnesses, he's a promising lad who could make it all the way. Let's go with that testament for the moment, shall we?

Undoubtedly, Kubica's last few Grand Prix Fridays have been impressive. But, compared with the Honda and the Williams driven by Formula One's two 'Man Friday' grandees - respectively, Anthony Davidson and Alex Wurz - Robert's BMW usually carries rather less fuel.

For long runs, Williams dispatch Wurz with 60kg on board (sometimes 80kg), while Honda usually send Davidson out with 50kg amidships; by contrast, Kubica rarely has more than 30kg aboard. For their end-of-session glory-runs, Alex and Anthony run 30kg, to retain a weight distribution comparable to that of the race drivers; BMW require no such rigour from Robert.

In Canada, of course, Kubica's Friday pace was surely enhanced by his flexible friend - or, to be precise, the ingenious deflecting rear wing whose function was photographed so graphically by autosport.com last Friday.

In truth, Robert's pace was suspiciously stunning from the start. Remember that, in the first Friday session, on a difficult, dusty and still 'green' circuit that he had never seen before, he lapped 1.9 seconds quicker than the next-quickest man, Davidson, and 2.6 seconds quicker than the man in P3, Wurz. Ah, but that's because he's the next Schumi, we were told. Yeah, right.

On Saturday morning, everyone wanted to see autosport.com's photographs - and, over breakfast in all the teams' hospitality areas, every laptop we spotted was logged on to our accompanying 'BMW facing protest over rear wing' story.

Robert Kubica © Reuters

In the end many F1 insiders speculated that, fearing a successful protest from agitators-in-chief McLaren and/or Honda, and therefore moving to eliminate the danger of personal disgrace, BMW's Mario Theissen ordered the trick wings to be removed from Jacques Villeneuve's and Nick Heidfeld's cars before official qualifying. The result was that no BMW ever went as fast, relative to its opposition, as Kubica had routinely managed earlier in the weekend.

So just how good is young Kubica? Well, as I say, he's a promising lad who could make it all the way. He may well be very good indeed. He may even be the next Schumi (except that Fernando Alonso is that already, isn't he?). Whatever, plenty of BMW people want him to race their F1 car next year, and perhaps he should. The identity of his teammate is less certain.

It should, in my opinion, be Jacques Villeneuve. No, Jacques isn't perfect. No, he isn't as good or as quick as Schumacher, Alonso or Raikkonen. But he's better than the man in the other BMW, Nick Heidfeld, as he's shown throughout most of this year. And, in terms of PR - which, when all's said and done, is what BMW put its F1 team on this earth to engage in - he's light years ahead of dreary old Nick.

So BMW's ideal 2007 line-up is Villeneuve-Kubica, right? Yes, right, but it will not - cannot - happen like that. Why not? Because Heidfeld is contracted up to and including 2008, that's why not.

At this point, we should all get on our knees, face Mecca (or Monza or, more topically, Indy), and sing hymns of praise to F1's modern-day prophet, Werner Heinz. Werner, in case you didn't know, is Heidfeld's manager, and what he's achieved over the past three years is nothing short of miraculous.

In 2003, Heidfeld was unloved by all in F1. He scored just six world championship points for Sauber that year, less than half the total amassed by his equally unappreciated and eventually rejected teammate, Heinz-Harald Frentzen.

Nick was a man going nowhere, not very fast. So, in a last-ditch attempt to salvage something - anything - from his man's fast-fading F1 career, Werner went to see Eddie Jordan. "Nick will drive for you next year for no money, no expenses, nothing," he said. "You're on," replied EJ.

The following season was, of course, a depressing one for Nick. He scored points at Monaco (seventh) and Montreal (eighth) but nowhere else - which meant that, had not the FIA the previous year replaced the old 10-6-4-3-2-1 points-scoring system with the current 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 routine, he'd have scored no points at all. His last 10 races for Jordan resulted in the following results: ret, 16, 15, ret, 12, 11, 14, 13, 13, ret.

Admittedly, Nick had driven his shitbox Jordan as fast as he could - but, even so, Werner's gamble had failed, surely. Wrong! Somehow, he managed to persuade Frank Williams to take Nick on. Again, Nick would be earning next-to-nothing, but that didn't matter. For now he, Werner, had a plan.

Werner knew that the Williams-BMW marriage was heading for divorce, and he understood only too clearly which horse he should back. Nick was - is - German, and Werner figured that BMW would need a German driver after the divorce.

So it was that he launched what was sarcastically referred to by a rival driver's manager as "a major fucking prawn cocktail offensive", wining and dining BMW bigwigs at all levels, in an unstinting effort to make sure that, whenever or if ever BMW did their own thing, they would do it with Nick.

Werner Heinz and Nick Heidfeld © XPB/LAT

Werner didn't have to wait long, of course, but even when his ship came in - in the shape of BMW buying Sauber last year - he didn't rest. For no reason that was good, Theissen was persuaded to agree to a contract for Nick of three straight years' duration - no options on either side - and a fat stipend to go with it.

But it was the contract's duration, and not the money attached to it, that was ingenious. Why? Because it took Heidfeld's BMW relationship well past the end of Villeneuve's existing (Sauber) contract, which comes up for renewal at the end of this year.

So BMW cannot run Villeneuve-Kubica next year - well, not without spending a lot of time in court and forking out a lot of money and suffering a lot of bad PR in Germany, anyway. And that BMW will not entertain.

So it'll be Heidfeld-Kubica, right? Well, hang on a minute. In terms of PR appeal - a commodity of supreme importance to a company that has been carefully and cleverly positioned by its senior marketing executives as one of the world's sexiest brands - Heidfeld-Kubica would be by some margin F1's least alluring 2007 driver line-up.

I mean: put it this way. Take a long, hard look at a BMW M6. Let your eyes follow its muscly-yet-supple curves. Check out its hunky 19-inch five-spoke alloys. Imagine your mates' faces if you casually told them, over a beer, "I've bought an M6 - yes, guys, a 507bhp BMW M6." And now, with those images fresh in your consciousness, bring to your mind's eye the goofy phizogs of Messrs Heidfeld and Kubica. Exactly.

So BMW can't run Heidfeld-Kubica, can they? And because they can't not run Heidfeld, for all the reasons we've just been through, they'll have to run Heidfeld-Villeneuve again. Which means that, owing to the genius of Werner Heinz, Kubica will surely have to wait until 2008.

And, in turn, we'll all have to wait until 2008 before we find out whether he's the next Schumi or not.