MPH: Mark Hughes on...

Mention F1's three-week 'break' to anyone technical at Ferrari or McLaren and you'd get a derisory laugh. With the championship fight at a critical stage, each was flat-out adding performance to their cars. The Ferrari factory traditionally has a one-week summer shutdown during this period; for the windtunnel and production boys it was cancelled.

Ferrari turned up at Valencia with significant aero developments around the bargeboard and sidepods. Although McLaren's changes appeared less significant, this was more a reflection of the two teams being at different points in their development cycles; McLaren made major upgrades at Silverstone and Hungary. Ferrari made theirs here and is expected to have yet more at Spa. But McLaren had been every bit as busy; it's just that it was in fine-tuning rather than major upgrades.

But it's clear that BMW has fallen out of this development race. After its 1-2 in the Canadian Grand Prix Robert Kubica led the championship. Almost from this moment, it seems, the team decided to give up on this year's title quest to concentrate on next year's car.

Kubica's philosophy: Carpe Diem

This is not a decision that has pleased Kubica. Behind the scenes he has questioned how many times they are likely to get the opportunity of winning a world championship. If they are in the thick of it, he has argued, they should fight like hell for it because they don't know if or when the chance comes again.

BMW has countered they were unlikely to have won it given that they were a few tenths off the pace of Ferrari/McLaren, therefore why waste valuable development time that could be better spent on ensuring they took future titles on merit - and on their own terms.

It's a decision that might be seen as a reflection of BMW's ethos: confidence in its own path and the logical, progressive way of that path, certain it's a route to an eventual title.

Kubica is more sparky in spirit than that: less Germanic, more fiery and warrior-like, prepared to fight for whatever he can get. He knows only how to fight like hell and drive like the wind, is less interested in what to him are abstract notions of strategic plans. His career has not been one of strategic plans; coming from where he does - a suburb of Krakow and with modest means - he couldn't contemplate career 'strategies' as such. Unless throwing yourself in and fighting to the maximum at all times can be considered a strategy. Happily, it worked. But the fight has left its mark on his personality.

They are in some ways an ill-matched partnership, Kubica and BMW, for all the above reasons. Yet in another way they're perfect for each other. Neither of them minds the arguments, the squabble. So long as it yields results, they don't need the warm cuddly feeling. They always know where they stand relative to each other.

But Kubica will never automatically be part of anyone's legion. Not in the way that Hamilton has for McLaren, for example. Or Schumacher did at Ferrari. If he sees it makes sense he'll sign up but he'll spit in your face as he does so. He marches to no one's beat but his own. Long term he'll stay only if BMW can keep up with him.

He's fast and furious and needs specific qualities from his car to access his potential and he makes it the team's problem to find those qualities. It's a very simple attitude.

Over to you then, BMW

But now team and driver are at a difficult crossroads in their relationship. Kubica's existing contract expires at the end of this year. Naturally the team wants to retain him. But he's not sure if he wants to be retained - particularly as there's potentially a Ferrari seat on the market in 2010.

A few weeks ago BMW - keen not to simply keep him match fit so he can defect to Ferrari a year later - wanted him to commit to a multi-year deal. Kubica was insisting it's one year or nothing. Illustrating where the balance of power lies in this relationship it's believed that Kubica now has the one-year deal.

It's not necessarily because he plans to jump ship to Maranello, or that there will even definitely be room for him there. It's more that it leaves his options open, he can be better positioned in a year to make a call on which is the best place to be long term.

So now BMW needs to come up with a car in 2009 that's good enough to make him want to commit there beyond then, good enough to make Ferrari a less attractive proposition. In which case, BMW's decision to concentrate early on the '09 car - the decision that so dismayed Kubica when it was made - may come to be the very reason he ends up staying there.