From F1 disaster to triumph: Robert Kubica's two monumental Montreal years

F1

In 2008, Robert Kubica left the Canadian Grand Prix an F1 winner — and leading the championship. A year earlier, he had been lucky to leave with his life, as Matt Bishop remembers

Robert Kubica crashes at the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix

Robert Kubica's BMW-Sauber shatters at Montreal. He'd be on the tope step of the podium a year later

Grand Prix Photo

We all hope that this year’s Canadian Grand Prix offers its participants more in the way of triumph than disaster, but, Formula 1 being Formula 1, indeed sport being sport, the way of things is that some people will always have a better day than others.

In recent-ish years, no Formula 1 race has offered disaster and triumph, in successive seasons, in as starkly contrasting a way as has the Canadian Grand Prix. Let’s start with the triumph, which happened in 2008. I remember arriving in Montreal in nervy mood, for I was in my first few months as a McLaren man, and, although our star driver Lewis Hamilton had won two of the six grands prix that had taken place so far that year, our team’s old foe Ferrari had won the other four (two each for Kimi Räikkönen and Felipe Massa). Nonetheless, Hamilton headed the Drivers’ World Championship standings, having scored 38 points to Räikkönen’s 35 and Massa’s 34.

Hamilton has always liked Montreal – he scored his maiden grand prix victory there in 2007 and he has now won there seven times – and in 2008 he took the pole. Alongside him on the front row of the starting grid was not a Ferrari, however, but the BMW-Sauber of Robert Kubica. That is how the race ran at first – Hamilton ahead of Kubica – until on lap 20 Hamilton locked up in the pitlane, his McLaren sliding into the back of Räikkönen’s Ferrari, damaging both cars terminally. Kubica won – the first grand prix victory not only for the BMW-Sauber team but also for a Polish driver. Moreover, after the race, he headed the Drivers’ World Championship standings, having scored 42 points to Hamilton’s and Massa’s 38.

What happened next? Neither he nor the team ever won again, that’s what happened next. It is said that the BMW board had set a target for 2008, and that target had been to win a grand prix. Now that the boys and girls from Hinwil had done just that, an instruction from Munich was issued: immediately transfer development effort and budget to the 2009 car, since we have done what we set out to do in 2008 and we must now set our sights on winning the world championship in 2009.  Did it work? No, it did not. Kubica ended up fourth in the 2008 Drivers’ World Championship, but worse was to come; much worse. The 2009 BMW-Sauber car was a dog, and Kubica finished a distant 14th in that year’s Drivers’ World Championship. At the end of the year BMW pulled out of Formula 1, selling their team back to Peter Sauber, and the Bavarians have not darkened its door since. Race teams should be run not by suits but by racers - it is a cliche but it is true. Had the Munich suits allowed the Hinwil racers to give it a go after Canada 2008, as they so desperately wanted to, the epic Hamilton-versus-Massa finale at Interlagos five months later might just have been a three-way battle.  And now let’s deal with the disaster - except that, thank god, it was not actually a disaster. I am referring to the Canadian Grand Prix of 2007, the year before Kubica’s Montreal triumph. He qualified his BMW-Sauber eighth - good but not great and well behind his team-mate Nick Heidfeld in P3 - and he was running well enough until, on lap 22, Adrian Sutil crashed his Spyker at Turn 4, prompting a safety car deployment. Four laps later the safety car peeled into the pit lane, and the race was back on. On that same lap, approaching the hairpin, Kubica’s BMW-Sauber clipped Jarno Trulli’s Toyota, which Kubica had been trying to pass, ran wide onto the grass, hit a bump, and was launched airborne with savage force into a concrete wall. The car then ricocheted and barrel-rolled, three of its wheels were ripped from its chassis, its nose cone was torn away, and both its side pods were pulverised. Finally, it came to a rest against a barrier, on its side. Kubica’s feet were clearly visible where the front of his car had been wiped out, and his head was still. I was a journalist in 2007, having not yet joined McLaren, and I was in the Montreal media centre that day. It was at that time a small and crowded room, usually filled with the noise of scribblers bickering, or laughing, or both. Now it was suddenly silent. We sat and watched the TV monitors, none of us daring to say what we were all privately thinking: was Kubica dead? The medical car arrived. The doctors crouched around the driver, their rushed movements telegraphing their concern. After what seemed like hours but was in fact only minutes, his motionless body was stretchered to an ambulance.  Sitting on the row ahead of me was Pino Allievi, the veteran La Gazzetta dello Sport journalist, a man who had counted Enzo Ferrari as a friend. I saw that he was punching a number into his mobile phone. He began to whisper, too quietly for the rest of us to overhear even in the eerie silence that now possessed the room. ‘I think he’s talking to one of the BMW-Sauber engineers,’ someone said.  We waited. Allievi was no longer speaking, but his phone remained clamped to his ear. We waited some more. Suddenly he sat up very straight.

Räikkönen climbs out after being hit by Hamilton

Grand prix Photo

Robert Kubica with arms in the air celebrates on the podium after winning 2008 Canadian Grand Prix

Victory for Kubica at Montreal in 2008

Grand Prix Photo

What happened next? Neither he nor the team ever won again, that’s what happened next. It is said that the BMW board had set a target for 2008, and that target had been to win a grand prix. Now that the boys and girls from Hinwil had done just that, an instruction from Munich was issued: immediately transfer development effort and budget to the 2009 car, since we have done what we set out to do in 2008 and we must now set our sights on winning the world championship in 2009.

Did it work? No, it did not. Kubica ended up fourth in the 2008 Drivers’ World Championship, but worse was to come; much worse. The 2009 BMW-Sauber car was a dog, and Kubica finished a distant 14th in that year’s Drivers’ World Championship. At the end of the year BMW pulled out of Formula 1, selling their team back to Peter Sauber, and the Bavarians have not darkened its door since. Race teams should be run not by suits but by racers – it is a cliche but it is true. Had the Munich suits allowed the Hinwil racers to give it a go after Canada 2008, as they so desperately wanted to, the epic Hamilton-versus-Massa finale at Interlagos five months later might just have been a three-way battle.

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And now let’s deal with the disaster – except that, thank god, it was not actually a disaster. I am referring to the Canadian Grand Prix of 2007, the year before Kubica’s Montreal triumph. He qualified his BMW-Sauber eighth – good but not great and well behind his team-mate Nick Heidfeld in P3 – and he was running well enough until, on lap 22, Adrian Sutil crashed his Spyker at Turn 4, prompting a safety car deployment. Four laps later the safety car peeled into the pit lane, and the race was back on. On that same lap, approaching the hairpin, Kubica’s BMW-Sauber clipped Jarno Trulli’s Toyota, which Kubica had been trying to pass, ran wide onto the grass, hit a bump, and was launched airborne with savage force into a concrete wall. The car then ricocheted and barrel-rolled, three of its wheels were ripped from its chassis, its nose cone was torn away, and both its side pods were pulverised. Finally, it came to a rest against a barrier, on its side. Kubica’s feet were clearly visible where the front of his car had been wiped out, and his head was still.

I was a journalist in 2007, having not yet joined McLaren, and I was in the Montreal media centre that day. It was at that time a small and crowded room, usually filled with the noise of scribblers bickering, or laughing, or both. Now it was suddenly silent. We sat and watched the TV monitors, none of us daring to say what we were all privately thinking: was Kubica dead? The medical car arrived. The doctors crouched around the driver, their rushed movements telegraphing their concern. After what seemed like hours but was in fact only minutes, his motionless body was stretchered to an ambulance.

Robert Kubica BMW Sauber F1 car against the barriers after crashing in the 2008 Canadian Grand Prix

Harrowing sight of Kubica’s crash led many to fear the worst

Grand Prix Photo

Sitting on the row ahead of me was Pino Allievi, the veteran La Gazzetta dello Sport journalist, a man who had counted Enzo Ferrari as a friend. I saw that he was punching a number into his mobile phone. He began to whisper, too quietly for the rest of us to overhear even in the eerie silence that now possessed the room. “I think he’s talking to one of the BMW-Sauber engineers,” someone said.

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We waited. Allievi was no longer speaking, but his phone remained clamped to his ear. We waited some more. Suddenly he sat up very straight. “Si?” he said, pronouncing the word in an interrogative tone. “Si?” again. Now louder: “Si? Si? Si?” Then he stood, turned around, smiled his famously broad smile, and shouted at the top of his voice, in English, “HE IS ALIVE!”

So he was. So he is. In those days he was a truly brilliant driver. Had his right arm not been so badly injured in another huge shunt, this time on the first stage of the 2011 Ronde di Andora Rally, in a Skoda Fabia of all things, he would be still. Even now he is very good – he finished second in the LMP2 class at Le Mans on Sunday, just as he had done in the same race the year before, and he won the LMP2 class in the Spa-Francorchamps Six Hours six weeks ago – but he used to be as good as anyone we have ever seen. Yes, anyone.

He has had his triumphs, and, at just 38, he has them still; but they could have been even more triumphant. He has had his disasters, too; they could have been even more disastrous. Let’s just be thankful that they were not.

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