Robert Kubica – The Champion That Never Was
December 13, 2012 in F1 2012, Robert Kubica, Winter Break Guest Blog Posts
The third guest blog post of the winter break comes from James Parker, who I’ve had the pleasure of writing blog post with for the past few months. To read more of his brilliant work, visit the Grand Prix Merchandise Blog.
I am not going to beat around the bush here; Robert Kubica is a phenomenal racing driver, ever since his magnificent debut in 2006 at the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend, he has wowed fans not only with his talent, but his modest, spectacular personality off the circuit, one of the last true gentleman racers in Formula 1, a man who no-one can say a bad word about.
He became a secret “favourite” of mine during his time in Formula 1, encapsulating everything in what I feel a WDC should possess, he was put simply the complete package. In terms of raw talent he was up there with the best, able to wring the neck of really poor cars, and drag them into places they had no right to be. The 2010 season was perhaps best proof of that, where the pole went on to claim 10 top 6 finishes which included 3 podiums, in a car that was 5th fastest at best. This talent tied with brutal consistency, and a gentle modest personality away from the circuit made Kubica one of the most popular drivers in the paddock and that is what makes his story so sad.
Of course by the time I write this, pretty much every Motorsport fan in the world knows about those tragic events of February 2011, a horrifying incident that perhaps has robbed us of witnessing Robert achieving the success at the pinnacle of Motorsport that he deserves. Whilst it could be argued that Kubica was taking a tremendous risk rallying in the off season, and given another day could have quite easily walked away unharmed like his co-driver that day, you could never persuade a person like Robert that. He lives, breathes, eats, sleeps his passion, it is entwined into the DNA of each and every racing driver, and is the sole reason, that during the winter break of 2011, the pole needed to race, to feed that addiction that had gone missing whilst he was away from the circuit ahead of the 2012 Formula 1 season. Trying to explain that to a person outside of the Motorsport world is extremely difficult, something that racing drivers themselves find incredibly complicated to put into words, but when we see Michael Schumacher jumping straight onto a motorbike and racing at the age of 43 directly after his retirement from F1, we start to understand, it is something they simply have to do – You can take the racing driver away from the race track, but you can’t take the racing driver out of the man. Read the rest of this entry →
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