Gronholm's verdict on Kubica

Marcus Gronholm took a breath and considered the question.

"Maybe..."

Silence.

"OK. Hmm. Maybe."

More silence. Serious thought.

"You know, when you have to think about what he has to do with his hand..."

Final pause.

"Yes."

"Yes."

You can almost hear the two-time world champion smiling down the phone.

"He is the most talented driver I have ever sat with. Yes."

Who's he talking about?

Do you really need to ask? It's the man of the moment, Robert Kubica. Gronholm spent Friday afternoon in Sweden's far, far north, near a town called Kall. And he spent it on the wrong side of the right car.

He spent it alongside a man who once won the Canadian Grand Prix. The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, even at its wettest, is no match for the gripless wilderness the Pole led the Finn into.

Was he worried?

Kubica starred early on in Monte Carlo © XPB

"No, not at all. OK, maybe the speed is making me a little bit worried, it's quick in places. When we were doing that I was thinking a little bit: 'Oh, shit...' But we didn't have any moments, we didn't have any problems at all."

Gronholm had seen Kubica from the outside when he won the Janner Rally in Austria last month, but now he'd been on the inside, what did he think?

"Wow," he says, "this guy can drive - there is no question. You know, he knows straight away when he needs the throttle and when he needs to be on the brakes.

"There's no dur-dur-dur, waiting to be one or the other. Bang, he's on it and he's got it right. There's no messing."

It's a couple of days since Gronholm emerged from the Lotos-coloured Ford, but clearly the Kubica speed has left an impression with a man who knows a thing or two about speed in the snow. Gronholm's a Rally Sweden winner five times himself.

Testing is testing, though. And Kubica's speed down the same stretch of road - be it in a race or a rally car - is beyond question. It's quite likely, pound for pound, there's nobody quicker in the world right now. But rallies are a different matter.

Kubica's tackled two WRC rounds in a World Rally Car and crashed three times.

"He needs to learn rallies," says Gronholm. "This is his only problem, he doesn't have the experience.

"Maybe he could do with going a little bit easier, this makes it better for him to get the experience. Sure, he can do the fastest stage times, but right now it's impossible for him to fight at the very top without the experience of the conditions and rallies.

"But, for sure, he has so much talent. Incredible guy, incredible."

What's even more incredible is the raw speed he's found on a surface totally alien to him.

"He told me he had done some running in the snow in Poland," Gronholm says,"but in a Group N Mitsubishi or something like that. It's amazing that he has the speed and the feel for the car.

"This week it will be tough for him though. He still has a lot to learn. He has to think about keeping the studs in the tyres when the surface and the grip is changing and, of course, he has to make notes on a rally where he hasn't been before.

"Every driver will have more experience than Robert and it will be like this all of this year.

"Maybe winning this year isn't possible, but when he has more experience then everything is possible."

And everything is becoming increasingly likely...

ANALYSIS: How good was Kubica on the Monte?

Enough of the superlatives. Let's take the emotion out of the equation. Let's be brutal, let's be honest... how good was Robert Kubica's Monte Carlo Rally?

First, the facts. This was Kubica's second World Rally Championship outing in a factory World Rally Car. And his second retirement. And third crash. Between them, Rally GB and Monte Carlo included 37 stages, the Pole made the finish of 12.

There's no arguing with any of the above. Those are the statistics, those are the facts. Shall we look beyond them?

Let's start with the Monte. This was Kubica's first start on this event (he retired on the prologue stage in 2010), which meant he had never seen any of these roads at competitive speed. Ahead of the opening round of this year's WRC, Kubica contested - and won - the Janner Rally in Austria. The conditions on the opening round of the European Rally Championship would offer a taste of what was to come in the French Alps, but not much more. In addition to that, he had tested his M-Sport Ford Fiesta RS WRC for a couple of days before Christmas.

Digging deeper, let's look into SS1, Monte Carlo. The 15.83-mile Orpierre-St Andre de Rossans stage made for a very complicated start. Not run in recent years, the road climbed to just over 1000 metres for the first six miles before dropping down to the finish at 657 metres.

Tight, twisty and very technical, this was a tough opener. The constantly changing nature of the road would offer no rhythm for the driver, no chance to build confidence. And then you add the weather into that equation. The weather on the first morning caught everybody out (everybody except world champion Sebastien Ogier's dad, who was spectating in the stage and called his son to tell him his choice of slicks was "crazy").

Kubica's talent was evident in Monte © XPB

As the cars left service in Gap at just after 0600, the temperature began to drop quickly. The teams had been reliably informed of rain, possibly heavy rain, falling for the duration of the stage. The drop in temperature turned that rain into sleet and snow. Ogier smacked the Armco at the first corner. Thierry Neuville chopped a telegraph pole in two just four miles in. This tough stage just got tougher.

Factors working in Kubica's favour at this point were the road-cleaning effect - the nine cars ahead of him were undoubtedly spreading the slush to the side to offer a little more contact for his Michelin slicks. It should be noted that the slick we're talking about isn't the pure, treadless version we see on Formula 1 cars, it's a moulded slick that contains tread across the whole tyre but is more heavily treaded on the outside shoulder. But, even in its super-soft form, which the drivers were all using, it was a very, very long way from being the perfect cover.

So, Kubica was on the line with some cleaning done for him up front. That, however, has to be balanced by the fact that he's leaving that line at 0746. It wasn't completely dark, but equally the sun hadn't yet shown its face. Half-light is far from easy to drive as you constantly try to look beyond the spotlights. Oh, and another thing, Kubica's main spots weren't secured properly after he worked on the car ahead of the stage - so they were bouncing around in the high-speed bits.

So, taking all that into consideration, here's an analysis of Kubica's run through 15.83 miles. Split one came at 1.42 miles and the only driver to get within a second of him was Kris Meeke, running two cars further back. He was 0.4 seconds slower than Kubica. Ogier dropped 6.1s to Kubica in split one - don't forget, he'd biffed the barrier already. Split three was the only one of five where Kubica wasn't quickest, Bryan Bouffier beat him into second by 1.8s over that particular 3.47 miles.

In the final sector, the stage came through some real twisty stuff and turned left onto the D116, an open and faster road. And from then on, it was much higher speed all the way to the finish. Big commitment here bagged Kubica an astonishing final split; Ogier was second, a second a mile down on the Lotos Fiesta.

Crossing the line, Kubica was fastest by 14.3s to former Monte winner Bouffier, who was running right behind him through terrain he knows very, very well.

"Hardest stage of my life," was the leader's appraisal. And it's not hard to see why. The road was a horrific mix of slush, running water, black ice and snow - the sort of stage for which a driver need all of his experience, guile, rallycraft and know-how.

The Monte was Kubica's ninth WRC start and only the 40th rally he has started in his 29 years; experience, guile, rallycraft and know-how are all on his 2014 wish list.

The second stage offered more rhythm along with a super-quick downhill section from the Col de Pommerol. Kubica was beaten by three drivers in the first split, but from then on he was unbeatable and sensational in the fast section. There was slightly less slush and snow, but more mud from the cars cutting ahead. But the patchwork of concrete, asphalt and just about every other take on what constitutes a sealed surface makes for a constant guessing game. Will it grip?

It does. Two stages in, two stages won and Kubica has a 36.8-second lead over Ogier.

He was almost as bemused as anybody else.

"There were a lot of drivers with a lot more experience of this rally and these conditions than me," he says, "and if they couldn't get it right, what chance did I have?"

Getting it right would have meant a winter tyre on SS1 and, according to Ogier, the potential for a five-minute lead.

Kubica might not yet have that ability to second-guess the conditions or the complex mountain meteo, but what he does have - and what shone through brighter than anything - is a peerless natural talent behind the wheel and a breathtaking feel for what the car is telling him.

Add to that a shocking appetite for data and detail and you're getting close to figuring out how he did what he did on day one of the Monte.

A longer version of the Kubica Monte Carlo analysis appears in the January 30 issue of AUTOSPORT magazine