GP2 Forum

Hi folks, it's a very sad evening here...

Robert Kubica suffered today a very hard crash at Ronde di Andora (Italy) Rally.
Italian Police is now investigating on accident dynamics, but Jacub Gerber - his coequiper, unharmed by the accident - said that this morning, at 8.30 AM, they were driving a Skoda at Testico but unfortunately Robert took a turn too quickly and lost the car against a fence (that penetrated inside the car, Kubika's side) and then a wall.
Kubica remained stuck inside the cockpit but Gerber managed to come out and seek for help - which arrived in minutes. He has been brought to the nearest hospital, and went under surgery to reduce multiple fractures to right arm, hand and perhaps leg, and a massive internal bleeding.
It is not a life-threatening issue, but the risk to completely lose the use of right hand is very high at the moment.

I am keeping my finger crossed for him at the moment... I am sure you'll do the same. He is a very nice guy, good driver and I feel sad for him.

Gabriele wrote:-... but the risk to completely lose the use of right hand is very high at the moment.

I am keeping my finger crossed for him at the moment... I am sure you'll do the same. He is a very nice guy, good driver and I feel sad for him.

The doctors are thinking about an amputation of his hand
I cross my fingers for him but I think he sadly can forget now to drive a F1 car this year....

...remembering about Nannini's crash, I think that if the doc decide to amputate his hand he will never drive in F1 at all.

My prayers go to him......... I hope they don't cut his hand off.

Hopefully, the kinds of rumours that are obviously floating around by now are not going to be confirmed. It would be sad to see any kind of development that could lead to him not driving a race car anymore.

I'm hoping he can heal and recover from this, even if at this point, close to the beginning of the season, taking the proper time for that could mean he might miss a few races early on.

I also really hope the doctors can save his hand and that his injuries can be healed completely. If this the case at least the possibility is given that he can drive a car again, although it will be a hard way back into the cockpit. I wish all the best to him!!

Johnny Herbert had a horrible crash in F3000 (or something similar) once and the doctors had almost to amputate his leg, but gladly they managed to save it. But you still see that he had this accident when you see him walking. Same goes also for Martin Donelly, who was even more lucky. And I think he never returned to a racing car. And then like already mentioned Nannini, his hand was cut of during an helicopter crash but doctors were able to save it. I think he didn't gain the old power in it again, but was able to drive an F1 again (only testing, I think with a power-steering) and continued in DTM. So these are all relatively good examples, let's hope we can say something about Robert, too, in some month!

It seems that after surgery the doctors decided NOT to amputate his hand.
Nevertheless the functionality is at the moment compromised. His arm and hand will have to undergo through other micro-surgery to gain back its old functionality.
That's a small but good news.

This is very sad I hope Kubica will be fine

Gabriele wrote:It seems that after surgery the doctors decided NOT to amputate his hand.
Nevertheless the functionality is at the moment compromised. His arm and hand will have to undergo through other micro-surgery to gain back its old functionality.
That's a small but good news.

That sounds good, perfect! =D> Let's hope for more of these news!

That sounds positive! I hope he recovers, I want to see him drive again!

DEHUMANIZER95 wrote:That sounds positive! I hope he recovers, I want to see him drive again!

I agree. Go Robert, we're with you.

It's good to hear the injuries are not too serious. I must say my heart skipped a beat when I heard, as Kubica is one of my favourite drivers not just of this generation but of all-time.

I fear that we may have seen a promising career cut short, or in a similar case to Olivier Panis, injury stopping what should have been a clear road to world championship success.

I hope and pray that Robert Kubica can pull a Mika Hakkinen on us all and bounce back better than before.

Robert will be fine. But his hand will spend 1 year to recover. I read few minutes ago an article which the doctors tell about Kubica's recovering, and he can take again full-functions on his right hand.

But after 1 year... the Polish can say good bye to 2011 Formula One season...

And the Brazilian press is rumouring about Bruno Senna as the Kubica's substitute in Lotus-Renault car. It's not the right way to become F1 race-driver (driving not only in the tests), but last week Bruno was presented as the main test-driver of the english-french team, the obvious is to replace Kubica with Bruno, however the driving-quality appear to be not the same...

I'm crossing my fingers for Kubica's full recovering, for his health and for his career. He's one of the best open-wheel drivers of the last 10 years!

And I don't think wrong F1 drivers racing in other types of competition. Mark Webber injuried his leg when was running in mountain bikes during the 2008 fall (spring in Australia), Juan Montoya injuried his shoulder in a motocross competition in early 2005, and after that the F1 drivers doesn't stop to compete or joy in other types of challenge. Kubica was unlucky this morning, but he loves rally, and it's not wrong to enjoy the passions. But I can imagine in the next weeks the F1 chiefs discussing about to forbidden the drivers to compete in other types of competition...
Sad...

To have even the prospect of a full recovery, after such an accident, is good, good news.

In the reflection of it, I think, as you're saying, Antonio, this could be another event in a row that will either support the teams that already don't allow their drivers to take part in any other competition, or prompt those who haven't had those kinds of clauses in their contracts to think about it.

Thinking about MotoGP, as a Valentino Rossi fan I have to say that what happened one year ago ruined probably two racing years for him.
In fact he started the 2010 season crashing on a "private" motocross event, damaging his shoulder's ligaments. Then he had pain for all the season, this resulting in poor focusing during the races and eventually a second crash that caused fractures to his right leg. He recovered from the leg problem, but he had to go under surgery on Nov 2010 to recover also from the shoulder problem (the ligaments were cut and detached, it had to be a REAL pain...). Now it's starting a new season at Ducati, but the shoulder is still recovering, and he probably have to spend another year looking other guys win.

I remember also Schumi having a strong passion in football (soccer for all yankees out there ). What if he broke a leg during a match?
I think that contract clauses should be inserted so that professional sports players are forbidden to put their "body" under any threat. This means from cricket player to F1 driver, from a soccer player to a horse riding champion.

Unfortunately sports changed into business. I mean, all sports. Players are no more "players", but now they mean investments, profit, and eventually loss. It's not the way I think about sports, but it's the way sport think about itself. Being this the rules... I don't see a "protection" clause so badly.