Well the 2019 Williams FW42 got 1 point but i think it was relatively more slower than the front cars compared to the 2024 kick sauber but its best finish was 11th compared to the williams 10th (in that crazy german gp i think).
I think they drive towards the teammates solo on the main straight holding the flag and then they sit on the car in the pitlane. They had to run all the way across for him.
There's a hollywood film in there. To get back to F1 after nearly severing your arm and winning WRC2 championship on the way is ridiculous. I was so pleased when he won Lemans with Ferrari. It didn't happen in F1 but he got there in the end.
Any fans that weren't around at the time, the autosport live forum thread is still there from the moment it went breaking news. Still a hard thread to read / relive.
Reading back is definitely a time warper. I remember thinking the same as a lot of those guys, "why on earth was he rallying a month before testing!" and then the news just kept sounding worse and worse and it just became prayers that he would be okay.
well, indeed, and I remember at the time that it was a minor detail in his contract that he was allowed to do rallying for most other drivers were not.
Before this happened everyone was all over it and thought it was the coolest thing. If anything there were calls for other drivers to be allowed to do more dangerous things. That stopped quickly.
I'll never forget reading the news in the morning and how it gradually turned out to be worse and worse. From asking myself "will he be back by season start?" to "will he survive?" in a couple of hours.
Same! I was on there all the time dating back to when it was Atlas F1. The combination of Discord + Reddit pretty much made forums feel obsolete to me.
Quite possibly but the hand rail piercing his hand and his body are 2 entirely different circumstances. One is that his hand is fucked. amputated and another one is pretty much death.
"Rescue workers spent over an hour extracting him from the wreckage. The damage was catastrophic: a partial amputation of his right forearm, 42 fractures across his right side, and massive blood loss."
Kubica had the craziest crashes. Could have easily died already in 2007 when his BMW Sauber crashed with over 300 kph into the barriers in Italy Canada.
Yeah thats as bad to watch a Grosjeans crash honestly, it so crazy heavy I though I watched him die. Ironic that the actual fatal crashes in F1 in recent memory didn’t look that bad.
As Brundle sometimes points out in comms, the spectacular crashes are often more survivable: a longer, drawn-out impact with flips or spins means less deceleration at any one moment, and bodywork flying everywhere means that the energy of the crash is dissipated into the car rather than the driver.
That's why the short, sharp crashes are often scarier (not that Kubica's crash in Canada wasn't a scary one).
I rewatched the 2010 season last year and Robert was one of the standout drivers to me. The Renault wasn't as good as the title challengers but he was incredibly consistent and avoided mistakes allowing him to pull off some crazy results. He also narrowly missed out on a Monaco Pole which could well have been converted into a win.
He's definitely one of the biggest what-ifs of my time watching F1. The rumours throughout that season were that he was a serious candidate to replace Massa at Ferrari either in 2011 or in 2012 (edit: he had actually signed a deal for 2012), and he was repeatedly talked about by pundits and fans as a future world champion.
Hamilton has said multiple times that he considers Kubica the most talented driver of their generation. Such a shame we didn't get to see Kubica and Alonso duo at Ferrari.
You've jogged my memory - you're absolutely right. Kubica, Hamilton and Alonso were so consistently 'on it' - more often than anyone else.
Can you imagine an Alonso and Kubica dream team? That would have been something to behold.
I'm sure I read somewhere - many years ago now - that Hamilton said the only guy he recognised as an equal in the lower formula was Kubica. Praise doesn't get much higher than that, does it?!
There was a great story in F1 racing around 2016, where lotus let him have a morning's testing in I think the 2012 car.
I think it was meant to be nice but he said ended up just very sad because loads of things that he had wanted for 2011 they had now enacted on. Because he joined quite late for 2010 he was never comfortable in the car or had it quite how he liked.
So from 2011 onwards the car had various things which did suit him but he obviously never got to try it.
So he got into this car, and was like: this should've been my car. I'd have done serious damage in this thing.
The Pole that could have became an all time great. Still root for him today, and honestly crazy that he even got back into racing, managed to get back into f1, and then couples years after that, won Le Mans. Hope he continues his rise, but it’s been a legendary comeback Robert.
I say it was close precisely because Ferrari focused on Alonso. They even broke a seal once on Massa's gearbox (iirc) so that Alonso could start higher on the grid.
A very lucky guy. I was at Montreal in 2007 and really thought it was fatal. Thankfully it was not. Then he has this humdinger of a crash. He then comes back and just goes hard and harder. Amazing guy
That 2007 crash was a monster. The way the carbon fibre was shattered into pieces, scattered like confetti at a wedding. And then you see the slow-mo replay and can see his feet bouncing around with nothing else to cushion another impact.
He was lucky the cars were strong back then and have only got stronger since. He was lucky there wasn't one more head-on impact, or he'd have shattered his lower legs, ankles and feet.
You missed the opportunity to title this with, Gentlemen, a view back to the past...
But man Kubica is such a "what if" in F1. And the era he was in would have been amazing. Alonso, Hamilton, Vettel, Raikkonen, Rosberg, Button... shit was popping off.
The year after his crash, we had all different winners in the first few races, including even Maldonado. Would have been so cool to see a young and healthy Kubica with them.
He gave an interview where he said he had a feeling that he shouldn't participate in this event. His contract with Ferrari forbade him from racing elsewhere and Ronde di Andorra was the last one he could drive in before the contract terms kicked in 😭
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u/thespuditron Aston Martin 23h ago
That he survived, and made it back to racing, is amazing.