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Formula 1
VARSHA: A Reminder Of The Risk
Robert Kubica, the star of the newly-renamed Lotus-Renault team left the Valencia test to do what he likes to do best, and that is race...
SPEED's Bob Varsha. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
At the end of last week I sat down and wrote for this space some thoughts on the first round of pre-season Formula One testing in Valencia, Spain; three days of new race car unveilings, technical buzz and mostly incident-free lapping. It was encouraging to see three different driver-car combinations topping the charts each of the three days: world champ Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull on Tuesday, Fernando Alonso and Ferrari on Wednesday, and Robert Kubica and Lotus-Renault on Thursday. There were the new Pirelli tires and Toro Rosso’s double floor and Lotus-Renault’s forward-blowing exhausts and lots more.
All in all, the news from Valencia sent a wonderful message about the potential of the new Grand Prix season, now barely a month away. I finished the piece and, like most people I know, put work aside to enjoy the Super Bowl before the next three days of F1 running later this week in Jerez.
On Monday the piece stayed on my desk and I started over, in a very different mood.
I’m sure Robert Kubica could not care less about American football. The star of the newly-renamed Lotus-Renault team left the Valencia test to do what he likes to do best, and that is race. He entered a club rally, the Ronde di Andora event in Italy, where he suffered horrific injuries in a crash on Sunday after losing control of his Skoda rally car hustling between timed stages.
According to reports the car spun and speared the end of the guardrail, which penetrated the cockpit and crushed Kubica’s right leg, arm and shoulder, and nearly severed his right hand. Rescue crews had to remove the engine from the car to get him out and to a medivac helicopter, more than an hour’s work during which Kubica nearly bled out. Two teams of doctors worked for seven hours just to stabilize his injuries and save his damaged hand and forearm, including restoring the nerves and blood supply. Compound fractures to his leg and shoulder will require further surgeries.
Though the doctors were hopeful after Kubica emerged from an induced coma Monday able to move his fingers and talk with his family (and ask about the condition of his co-driver, Jakub Gerber, who was miraculously uninjured), it’s highly likely that the season is over, and a career is at risk, for one of the most popular drivers in the sport.
As updates on Kubica’s accident filtered onto the internet, a cross-section of opinion emerged. My email and Facebook page brought questions about why Kubica was even in a rally car to begin with. One television talker tweeted that rallying with F1 testing underway was “crazy,” a photographer labeled him “stupid” and several fans scorned Kubica’s lack of “necessary focus” on the season ahead. How could he do this to himself? To his team? Even to his fans, as though there is some unwritten obligation for the driver to live his life as they, and not Kubica himself, sees fit.
Next year I’ll begin my fourth decade covering racing for television, and in that time I’ve done a lot of thinking about why racers do what they do, despite the obvious risks. In one of my earliest broadcasts, a Trans Am race in Florida, a driver died of a suspected heart attack possibly induced by the rigors of racing. A few years later at Daytona another lost his life in a crash at the backstretch chicane during a street stock enduro. And then there was May of 1994 at Imola, Italy, when Formula One lost Roland Ratzenburger and Ayrton Senna in a pair of crashes a day apart.
I was working for ESPN at the time, covering the Imola weekend from their Connecticut studios, and after the race I was asked by a young Chris Fowler, now a star with the network, how I prepared myself as an announcer for the possibility of a fatality during a race. My answer was going to the racers themselves, to hear how they dealt with the sport’s inherent risks.
I learned that while racers don’t like to talk about risks, they understand them and they deal with them, each in his or her own way. Not because they are daredevils, seeking danger just to put themselves in harm’s way for the thrill of escaping. They have nothing like what some might call a death wish. Instead, they are people for whom racing, and controlling high-performance cars, is a way of celebrating and enjoying life, not ending it.
When Darrell Waltrip was asked whether it made things easier that Dale Earnhardt was killed in the 2001 Daytona 500 “doing something he loved” DW responded “No one loves racing more than I do. But I don’t expect it to kill me.”
Kubica’s own people acknowledged as much in the aftermath of his accident. When pressed as to why Lotus-Renault would allow their star to indulge his passion for rallying, team principal Eric Boullier told the press "Robert is allowed to do it because it is close to his heart. For him, rallying is vital, it is his balance.” In other words, racing something other than a Formula One car is what makes Kubica who he is when he is in a Formula One car.
That’s good enough for me. I wish the very best for Robert Kubica, and I hope the doctors’ guarded optimism of a recovery is on target. Maybe he’ll stop rallying now that he, and we, have been given a frightening reminder about the risks involved in racing. Maybe not. It’s his choice, and his alone. And if he recognizes and accepts the risks, then there is nothing else anyone can say that matters.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
All in all, the news from Valencia sent a wonderful message about the potential of the new Grand Prix season, now barely a month away. I finished the piece and, like most people I know, put work aside to enjoy the Super Bowl before the next three days of F1 running later this week in Jerez.
On Monday the piece stayed on my desk and I started over, in a very different mood.
I’m sure Robert Kubica could not care less about American football. The star of the newly-renamed Lotus-Renault team left the Valencia test to do what he likes to do best, and that is race. He entered a club rally, the Ronde di Andora event in Italy, where he suffered horrific injuries in a crash on Sunday after losing control of his Skoda rally car hustling between timed stages.
According to reports the car spun and speared the end of the guardrail, which penetrated the cockpit and crushed Kubica’s right leg, arm and shoulder, and nearly severed his right hand. Rescue crews had to remove the engine from the car to get him out and to a medivac helicopter, more than an hour’s work during which Kubica nearly bled out. Two teams of doctors worked for seven hours just to stabilize his injuries and save his damaged hand and forearm, including restoring the nerves and blood supply. Compound fractures to his leg and shoulder will require further surgeries.
Though the doctors were hopeful after Kubica emerged from an induced coma Monday able to move his fingers and talk with his family (and ask about the condition of his co-driver, Jakub Gerber, who was miraculously uninjured), it’s highly likely that the season is over, and a career is at risk, for one of the most popular drivers in the sport.
As updates on Kubica’s accident filtered onto the internet, a cross-section of opinion emerged. My email and Facebook page brought questions about why Kubica was even in a rally car to begin with. One television talker tweeted that rallying with F1 testing underway was “crazy,” a photographer labeled him “stupid” and several fans scorned Kubica’s lack of “necessary focus” on the season ahead. How could he do this to himself? To his team? Even to his fans, as though there is some unwritten obligation for the driver to live his life as they, and not Kubica himself, sees fit.
Next year I’ll begin my fourth decade covering racing for television, and in that time I’ve done a lot of thinking about why racers do what they do, despite the obvious risks. In one of my earliest broadcasts, a Trans Am race in Florida, a driver died of a suspected heart attack possibly induced by the rigors of racing. A few years later at Daytona another lost his life in a crash at the backstretch chicane during a street stock enduro. And then there was May of 1994 at Imola, Italy, when Formula One lost Roland Ratzenburger and Ayrton Senna in a pair of crashes a day apart.
I was working for ESPN at the time, covering the Imola weekend from their Connecticut studios, and after the race I was asked by a young Chris Fowler, now a star with the network, how I prepared myself as an announcer for the possibility of a fatality during a race. My answer was going to the racers themselves, to hear how they dealt with the sport’s inherent risks.
I learned that while racers don’t like to talk about risks, they understand them and they deal with them, each in his or her own way. Not because they are daredevils, seeking danger just to put themselves in harm’s way for the thrill of escaping. They have nothing like what some might call a death wish. Instead, they are people for whom racing, and controlling high-performance cars, is a way of celebrating and enjoying life, not ending it.
When Darrell Waltrip was asked whether it made things easier that Dale Earnhardt was killed in the 2001 Daytona 500 “doing something he loved” DW responded “No one loves racing more than I do. But I don’t expect it to kill me.”
Kubica’s own people acknowledged as much in the aftermath of his accident. When pressed as to why Lotus-Renault would allow their star to indulge his passion for rallying, team principal Eric Boullier told the press "Robert is allowed to do it because it is close to his heart. For him, rallying is vital, it is his balance.” In other words, racing something other than a Formula One car is what makes Kubica who he is when he is in a Formula One car.
That’s good enough for me. I wish the very best for Robert Kubica, and I hope the doctors’ guarded optimism of a recovery is on target. Maybe he’ll stop rallying now that he, and we, have been given a frightening reminder about the risks involved in racing. Maybe not. It’s his choice, and his alone. And if he recognizes and accepts the risks, then there is nothing else anyone can say that matters.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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