Official 2011 Formula 1 Pre-Season Thread

Friend of Kubica and the best polish f1 journalist just wrote that he was in the hospital. Robert's condition was very bad so at first doctors had to save his life and after that they started working on injuries. He also said that he doctors have to wait couple hours now till they'll be able to say something more.

He is probably the most reliable source there and also promised that he'll write more news later.
 
With Kubica most likely needing at least half the season to recover, i don't think Renault will go with Senna. I think they'll try to get the Hulk, de la Rosa or some other of the many obviously talented and/or seasoned drivers who lost their seat.
 
Hulk is with FIF1.

As a reserve driver. I always figured reserve driver contracts to have a clause that you can get out when offered a race seat, but maybe i'm mistaken...
 
Because it's probably mandatory to have a reserve driver (correct me if wrong) and that who would have known that this accident would happen?
 
What good is Renault paying all these reserve drivers that when the time comes to use one, they decide to hire someone else. Why have them in the first place.

That's a good question. I can't think of a single reason to have Senna aboard. Grosjean is the only thing French about Renault except for the name and the other three guys are young hopefuls who may or not be ready to take a race seat.

I won't argue with using Senna if it would be about replacing Petrov, but Kubica is/was WDC material and needs to be adequately replaced.
 
Yeah, but all the WDC material already are in contracts with other teams.
 
I didn't see this posted earlier, hopefully not a repost.

350348059.jpg


It was basically a freak accident with the guardrail. Kubica is still in the car in the photo, it took an hour for the equipment to arrive to free him.
 
Just heard from the BBC about this, what the heck :(
One of my favorite drivers in the paddock for sure, just hope he gets better soon.
As far as the reserve driver, I hope they give Senna another chance. His uncle had great faith in him, perhaps in a faster car he can show it.
 
What a shame for Robert and indeed Formula 1 fans everywhere. I hope we manage to see him at some point this year :(.
 
Seeing those pictures, and reading articles online since I've come home, I just can't shake that sinking feeling that it could have been much much worse by a matter of mere centimetres.

For the sake of his family and friends especially, I personally am just thankful he's alive.
 
Seeing those pictures, and reading articles online since I've come home, I just can't shake that sinking feeling that it could have been much much worse by a matter of mere centimetres.

For the sake of his family and friends especially, I personally am just thankful he's alive.

What she said... As bad as things went they could just as easily have gone far worse...
 
There are plenty of drivers on the market. They can get Hulk from Force India, or Heidfeld (I don't think he found a place), obviously Senna is a better choice, he already did a full season, has good financial backing and it will be Senna behind the wheel of a Yellow/Black Lotus again, left are Liucci and Grosjean.
 
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Must be a huge downer for the renault engineers. They developed the car for kubica to take on the wdc, and now they're without a good driver... This must be so frustrating.
 
Must be a huge downer for the renault engineers. They developed the car for kubica to take on the wdc, and now they're without a good driver... This must be so frustrating.

It is frustrating for me as I only started watching F1 when Kubica arrived. I saw a couple of races before but found it much easier to follow F1 when I had somebody to support. Even in 2009 when the car was rubbish. Last year he was clearly having a good time at Renault, R31 looks sooo promising and now this happens. When I read first news yesterday I thought they were just making fuzz as media tend to do - many drivers have accidents in rally cars and they are ok. But after seeing those pictures with armco inside the car it is obvious that he was very unlucky and at the same he is lucky to be alive. I hope he can make full recovery and make an awesome come back to F1. And since I dont really care who wins the WDC now and have nobody to support I will probably not follow 2011 season closely. Damn, and I was so excited about Bahrain.

And here is a video from the car that was following Kubica:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALbxMiwf4nw&feature=player_embedded#at=211

You can see Robert's car at about 3:15.
 
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Seeing those pictures, and reading articles online since I've come home, I just can't shake that sinking feeling that it could have been much much worse by a matter of mere centimetres.

For the sake of his family and friends especially, I personally am just thankful he's alive.

Could've been a lot better by a few centimetres as well though ;)
 
Latest news are that Robert is out of coma and there should be more surgeries of his hand.

Co-driver said that at first he thought crash wasn't that bad, than he realized there is armco inside of the car. Also he and some other people said that help was very slow, it all took at least an hour. Apart from short pass out after the crash Robert was concious all that time.

These are very bad news for Renault. That's the problem when a team has only one good driver. As for replacement for Kubica, Senna seems logical, he is the first reserve drive. But on the other hand Hulk and Heidfeld should be considered by Renault also IMO. Sadly Kimi is now out of the picture.
 
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I thought Hulkenberg was quite impressive at Williams last year and the only real reason he was dropped was because the team needed more cash. If I was his manager I'd be making enquiries. A race seat at Renault would do more for his career than a reserve seat at Force India.
 
Terrible news.

Surely someone with experience like Heidfeld would be the best option at the moment. The season is still a long way off and there's much development to be done with all the testing sessions before Bahrain. It's times like now that you need an experienced driver to help with the development of the car. Who better than Heidfeld for that? As an added bonus, he has several years of experience driving with Kubica so he's not completely foreign to that aspect of things, whether it's adapting to a car that has been developed with Kubica in mind, or helping point things in a Kubica-focused direction, in the hope that he'll be back later this year.

Here's hoping for the best recovery possible for RK.
 
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