How Kubica came back to life in rallying

Robert Kubica wasn't coming. But I didn't know how to say that in Polish. The crowd standing at the Sweet Lamb fence next to me was in a never-ending loop of disappointment. Car came, flag waved, klaxons sounded, faces dropped.

Their hero was in the trees, roof-first, for the second time in as many days. Mid-Wales had done for the man who once conquered the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve to break his Formula 1 duck back in 2008. Having survived the wall of champions, he succumbed to mud on Hafren and a misunderstanding on Dyfi.

This wasn't what Kubica had in mind for his debut in a factory World Rally Car.

Then again, Wales in November hadn't really figured in the Pole's bigger picture - he was supposed to be winding himself up for back-to-backs at Austin and Interlagos.

Kubica's desire to make it back to F1 is well documented. But his efforts to get there have taken him down the road less travelled.

"It would," he says, "probably have been easier to go back to the track and drive in a championship on the circuit.

Kubica ended Rally GB upside down © McKlein

"That's not me. I set myself the challenge. I like to do things the hard way."

And rallying really was the hard way for RK this year. Make no mistake, Kubica loves rallying, always has done, but prior to the injuries sustained on an Italian rally in February 2011, he'd never considered it as part of his career path. Thick irony here; he's like the alcoholic who's chosen to drink his way back to life.

And back to life is exactly where he is right now.

I didn't know Kubica before this year, but talking to those who have known him a lot longer than me, it's clear he's back to just how he was in F1. Inquisitive. That's probably putting it politely.

Kubica is a one-man data download. And the way he has taken rallying apart, bit by bit and reconstructed it to his own understanding has been nothing short of exceptional. Nobody has worked harder than him in our sport this season. And nobody deserves success and the chance to take his career to the next level more than Kubica.

The man himself talks of needing years to find the experience required to make it to the top of rally world, but you can't help feeling he'd find a way to fast-track that process. The one thing he can't cut, however, is the level of experience needed. And Rally GB earlier this month highlighted that in graphic terms.

The corner(s) that caught out Kubica on Hafren and then Dyfi were nothing special. There were hundreds more like them on the route, but he won't get to see them again for another 11 months. And then he'll tickle them in a road car, before coming full-bore again in a World Rally Car (that's if he sticks with us).

Rallying involves more wellies than F1... © McKlein

In a nutshell, that's part of the frustration for Kubica. If he'd dropped it at the Spoon Curve or overcooked Copse, he'd be pulled out of the gravel and he'd have the opportunity of another crack at those corners, just not in an F1 car, courtesy of current testing regulations.

He certainly wouldn't have to wait another year.

Experience of rallies like Rally GB simply has to be earned and learned. The roads are just roads, but it's what happens to the surface when it's rained; it's what that lighter patch of mud means on the exit of that corner. It's experience in the same way that the Shane Warnes of this world know exactly when to send a flipper down a scrubbed Gabba wicket. Fresh-faced spinners come along every season, full of youth and enterprise, but it's guile and savoir-faire that wins test matches.

But, just as wannabe Warnies will be out spinning tennis balls against a brick wall from dawn until dusk, so Kubica has done all he can to level his own playing field.

Onlookers laboured under the illusion that Robert was seeing stages for the first time when he got to the first run of a recce this year. Not so, he had trawled the internet and drained YouTube of every onboard from every car possible in the weeks leading up to the event. It's reckoned that, by the time he got to the start of most stages in Wales, he'd already written himself a set of pace notes.

Kubica makes light of his preparation, intimating that he does no more than any other driver looking to make their way in motorsport. But actually, he never goes anywhere without having gone the extra mile first.

He has an intensity of focus and commitment that raises levels in the WRC service park. If something goes wrong on the car; if he goes off on a corner, he wants to see the data. He wants analysis. He wants to know why his preparation failed him, so it won't happen again.

Baran won the WRC2 crown with Kubica, but then quit © XPB

And that brings us to what will likely rank as one of Kubica's biggest disappointments in his motorsport career - the decision of his co-driver Maciek Baran to walk away from their partnership on the eve of the big shot.

To Kubica, Baran's decision was nonsensical. He made plain his frustration, but is far too nice a bloke to really vent his spleen on the subject.

The pair had worked together and privately talked of a three-year WRC commitment, to which Baran signed up and then walked away at the end of year one.

Kubica's ambivalence towards the WRC2 title he lifted this season is indicative of the bigger picture he's working towards. And Baran was supposed to be passing him the brushes as they worked on what would have been a masterpiece.

Those who know Kubica wonder if this could be the tipping point that sends him back to the circuits, where he relies on nobody but himself to go from corner to corner. Were that the case, it would be a tragedy for WRC. Kubica's a genuine hero of world rallying and a driver who could make a real difference in the future.

Certainly, staring at a clean sheet of paper without Baran will be a pretty painful feeling for Robert right now, but he's come a very, very long way in an extraordinarily short space of time. And not for the first time...

Along with the trademark intensity has come a sharp-edged sense of humour and very quick wit. Biding him farewell with a "see you in Monte..." was way too route-one to catch him out.

"I hope to see you somewhere next year," he bounced back. "Because when I do, it'll mean we're alive!"

Kubica's more aware than most of the biggest picture of all.