Kubica leads the heroes of Monte Carlo

You and I have both been in this position before on the roads. It's the one where the snow has started the melt and sits - as slush - between our tyres and mother earth.

First thing we do? Grip the wheel harder, shut our eyes and say a silent one to the big fella above.

Robert Kubica, a man who a few years ago wouldn't take a slick anywhere near snow, had other ideas. He was motoring along the D116, just outside Orpierre, south-west of Gap, when he found himself in just that position.

Braking for a medium speed right-hander, two tracks had been splashed through the slush. Kubica carved a third and fourth track.

As he tried to slow the Ford Fiesta RS WRC it stepped out of line and drifted towards the edge of the road.

That moment had arrived, the moment to test whether he had left his racing roots behind. For a racing driver, this situation was largely buggered and further participation depended on a large run-off area.

For a rally driver, everything remained possible.

Kubica led the first two stages © McKlein

In a split second, Kubica confirmed he is now a man of mud.

Down a gear and hard on the throttle. Harder on the throttle. You could almost see the left-rear flinch as it came within millimetres of dropping off the road. It wasn't a big drop, but it would certainly have meant a spin - and when you spin on slush anything can happen.

Eventually I, and those around me, managed to close our mouths. It takes a lot to silence rally fans in the French Alps at the start of the season. Kubica had just done that.

And he kept the mountains quiet for the next two days as he turned in one of the most staggeringly impressive drives in the history of the championship. Yes, it was that good.

Kubica deserved far, far more than to be left facing the sky at the bottom of a deep ditch halfway along the road from Vitrolle to Faye a day later.

At some point this year he will get his just desserts.

But he'll have to get past Sebastien Ogier first. And that's not going to be an easy task for anybody.

When the world champion was a minute-plus down on Bryan Bouffier last Thursday I found myself thinking maybe, maybe he might not be able to get it back. To stand any chance of getting back to the front, any further mistakes in tyre selection would be out of the question.

Ogier looked beaten on Thursday morning © McKlein

Ogier called his covers wrong for the next loop and still won by more than a minute two days down the line.

I stand corrected.

Ogier wanted that one and wanted it badly. Gap was his backyard.

In an effort to find out more about the world champion, I nosed AUTOSPORT's lovely Hyundai Santa-Fe out of Gap and headed north up the N85, France's fabled and fever Route Napoleon.

A couple of miles along and a right turn takes you onto a French equivalent B road and deeper into the mountains. Another slot right takes you onto an even smaller road and down into the town... village... hamlet of Forest Saint Julien. The home of the champion.

The place is absolutely tiny. Ogier's success and the logistics of his life has meant a move away, leaving just 199 inhabitants. The handful of houses are surrounded by some of the most beautiful mountains anywhere in the world.

It's in those mountains that Ogier learned to ski and became a champion. And it's on the roads to ski school that he learned to drive and became a champion.

The champion perplexes the stage-end media with tales of "smash" © McKlein

With that in mind, his dark mood through Thursday's tricky opening day was understandable. But, once he'd found the right tyres and made inroads into Bouffier's lead, his demeanour brightened. And, by the time he reached Digne-les-Bains, he was leading. And happy. And inquisitive.

"What," he asked , "is that stuff in the middle of the road? Is it smash?"

Smash? Hmm.

"The snow, when it is melting, what is this?"

Slush...

"Slush. There wasn't so much of this in Sisteron."

Another reason for him to be cheerful beyond learning another word in English (there aren't many left for him to learn now, so comprehensive is his language ability) was his time on Sisteron, his favourite road through the Alps.

In 1993, Carlos Sainz won that test in 23m22s. Since then, nobody has come close to that time - until last week, when Ogier smashed the record. Granted, the stage was 20 metres shorter this time around, but, still, 22m03.3s was still a very impressive effort from the Volkswagen driver.

Mission accomplished © McKlein

Ironically, on an event so challenged by wet and wintry weather, the clouds parted for Sisteron - this particular mountain pass almost laying itself down for the Hautes-Alpes' swiftest son.

An unusually warm winter had left just a couple of north facing corners covered in ice and the run to, and down from, the col was as quick as it had ever been.

Ogier made the most of it.

Once he was out front, the result was never in doubt. Even through the most difficult conditions on the final night, you just knew there would only be one man celebrating outside the Prince's Palace in Monaco on Sunday morning.

Actually, all three podium-dwelling drivers celebrated hard and with some reason. Runner-up Bouffier had never been so close to the top step of a World Rally Championship podium, while Kris Meeke's third place for Citroen was an incredible achievement for a driver under significant pressure at the start of his first full-time world championship programme.

I think I've done well to get to this point without mentioning Meeke, who drove an exceptional rally.

Ogier got to first after whacking a bridge in the first stage and slapping a bank on the second run through Vitrolles; Bouffier made second via an excursion into a field on Friday, but Meeke was third without fault.

There have been question marks over Meeke's approach, psychologists have been deployed to make sense of his head. It looks like they might have it fixed...

If ever there was a rally which commanded a policy of good sense over great speed, this was it. Meeke led the way in terms of level-headed haste from the mountains to Monaco.

Ostberg's fourth place bodes very well for his season © McKlein

His team-mate Mads Ostberg was just as praiseworthy in fourth.

The Norwegian has never liked asphalt in the dry, let alone in its wet and icy form, but the Citroen DS3 WRC's less sensitive and progressive approach to corners inspired him with the confidence to push.

Five spins slowed him on day one, but a deep end approach to learning brought big results later in the rally.

It was impossible to mention the deep end in Monte Carlo with adding the words Evans and Elfyn on the end. The Welshman's debut as a full-time member of the M-Sport squad was nothing short of extraordinary.

He didn't allow himself to get flustered while being constantly overloaded with weather, tyre and set-up data.

He swam. And not once did he look like sinking. Sixth and a stack of self-confidence come from such a strong finish to the opening round of his new life.

Getting to the finish of the Monte was everything, not least because there was no Rally2 lifeline. Another reason traditionalists love this event is because retiring means actually retiring.

And nobody understood the pulling power of the finish like Hyundai. The i20 WRC ran for the first time competitively last week, but so chronically short of testing mileage is the team, it was literally counting off every corner in an effort to burn more data onto engineer's empty hard-drives.

Unfortunately, Thierry Neuville made a mistake and retired from his fourth Monte in succession - the third straight on the opening day.

The Belgian's shunt, with the rally just four miles old, was unforgiveable. Hyundai's million-pound man briefly forgot to drive for the team.

Dani Sordo was his usual super solid and dependable self. Unfortunately an electrical switch aboard the #8 car wasn't quite so reliable and when it broke ahead of SS5, there was nothing to be done to breathe life back into the German-built Korean World Rally Car.

Fortunately for Hyundai, two days without fixing and following rally cars mean it stands some chance of dismantling its service park mega-structure and rebuilding it in Hagfors in time for round two... The team's approach to hospitality was another one of the outstanding features of the opening round of the WRC.

And now, north, and the - hopefully - frozen north for Rally Sweden. There was almost too much snow on the final night of the Monte; it would be nice to have that problem in Karlstad next month.