There have been occasions over the last few years when Robert Kubica said he had considered quitting motorsport. Not any more. Those thoughts have long gone.
“I thought it was maybe time for me to find new challenges,” Kubica said in an interview in April. “Not that I don’t love racing, and I didn’t want to race, but I just thought that as I was getting close to 40, which I am now, and I was not super happy with where I was.
“In the end, I knew if I stopped, I would miss racing, so I kept going. What endurance racing has given me is fresh air.”
The route Kubica, who will drive in the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium on Saturday, has taken to the hypercar class of the F.I.A. World Endurance Championship is worthy of a Netflix documentary.
After five years in Formula 1 from 2006, four with BMW and then a year with Renault, Kubica signed a contract to join Ferrari. In February 2011, he was almost killed in a crash in the Ronde di Andora Rally in Italy.
Multiple surgeries and extensive rehabilitation followed. Kubica rebuilt his life and career, returning to racing in 2013 and winning the second tier of the World Rally Championship that year.
“Formula 1 was my life,” Kubica said. “Not a lot of people understood, when I returned to racing, why rallies. It was simply because I wanted to give myself a big challenge. Rallying kept my head very busy, and I had to test myself.
“I wanted to see what I could do, how competitive I could be. I didn’t want to just be a number.”
Kubica, who is Polish, wanted to return to Formula 1. After a year as a reserve driver with Williams in 2018, the team gave him an opportunity the next season. Kubica scored one point from a 10th-place finish in the German Grand Prix.
“My Formula 1 comeback was one of my biggest, if not the biggest, achievements of my life,” Kubica said. “But it was a very disappointing year, not only for myself but a lot of people within the team.
“It should have been very different. It was still special. Nobody gave me a chance, but I worked hard for it, and I never would have done it if I had not felt able to be competitive.”
Kubica continued as a reserve driver with Alfa Romeo for three years, but he knew the Formula 1 dream was over. In 2021, he switched to endurance racing.
That year, he won three races en route to winning the LMP2 category of the European Le Mans Series. After eight years he was a champion again. In 2023 and 2024 he won the LMP2 category of the World Endurance Championship, and last year, he repeated his E.L.M.S. success.
“I never doubted my possibilities,” Kubica said of his 2021 triumph. “I was 36 at the time, and it took me back to my days in karting, when everything was like discovering something new. It was something special.”
Endurance racing has allowed Kubica to discover a different aspect to his driving. If it is a six-hour race or 24 hours, he has to share the car with one or two other drivers.
“The DNA is the same because you have to bring the car home as fast as possible,” he said. “Of course, you are sharing the car, so the approach is different. You have to have different skills as a driver compared to Formula 1.
“For example, you have to think as a group. My age probably helps me in that approach. It’s not about being as fast as possible on every lap. I can sacrifice myself for the group.”
This year, Kubica is driving for AF Corse in the hypercar class of the World Endurance Championship, alongside Phil Hanson of England and Yifei Ye of China. The team is affiliated with Ferrari, which will be running the 499P.
“All the drivers want to win,” Giuseppe Petrotta, the managing director of AF Corse, said in an interview in April. “We don’t need a loser. It is something we have to manage, to obtain the best for Ferrari.”
After the first two races of the year, the Qatar 1812 km in February and the 6 Hours of Imola in April, Kubica and his teammates are second in the standings.
Petrotta said the experience of Kubica had been invaluable to the team: “He has a professional, winning mentality. He is concentrated on every detail, always pushing us in many directions, focusing on details that were not planned.
“With Robert, his focus is not immediately on the best time, like a young driver, because we don’t need that. He is concentrated on understanding the tires, the car, and using all possibilities for the best result.”
Petrotta said he was surprised by Kubica and the resilience he has shown over his career.
“He is very passionate,” Petrotta said. “You can hear that in some of his radio communications.
“It is something we have to manage, to analyze after a race. But the key point is, he is fast and consistent when needed, which helps us and him find the best solution for each race.”
After a successful six years with United Autosports, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans LMP2 category in 2020, and moving to Hertz Team Jota last year, Hanson joined AF Corse this year.
In an interview in April, Hanson said the team “is one of the hungriest I’ve been with to win,” and called Kubica “the most hungry racing driver I’ve met to win and perform.”
Hanson, 15 years younger than Kubica, is amazed by the older driver’s passion and stamina at 40.
“When you think Robert’s been there and done it in so many different championships across so many different disciplines of motorsport, to still have this level of hunger at his experience level, is incredible,” Hanson said.
“He’s not complacent. He’s the last one to leave the track, even when things are done, just because he’s so fastidious in wanting to look at all the details, which shows how committed he is to getting that result.”
It is the mental capacity of Kubica that has astounded Hanson. “When you’re amongst traffic, fighting with other cars, that’s when mistakes happen because you’re multitasking to the fifth or sixth degree,” he said.
“For him, he’s thinking about strategy and other things on top of that. It’s rare that you do so many things at this high level where there are so many options and so many different aspects that go into it. That’s when it starts to separate the drivers.”
After coming close to quitting motorsport, the “fresh air” Kubica spoke of has reinvigorated him.
The horizon to his career is distant. “I learned a lesson in 2011 not to plan too far forward,” he said. “Although the work is very tough and the competition very high, I still have a lot of passion. It has become a lifestyle.
“I don’t know what will happen in the future, but I know one thing for certain, and that is whilst I’m enjoying what I am doing, and as long as I’m healthy and capable, I will continue. I will never go to a race and see it as work. This is something unique, something that life has given me.”
