Kubica aims to return to F1 this year

F1 Fanatic round-up

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In today’s round-up, Kubica hopes to return to F1 before the year is out.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Kubica, la prima intervista “Torner?â?? pi?â?? forte di prima” (La Gazzetta dello Sport)

In the full interview, which appears to be only in the print version of the magazine, Kubica talks about his intention to return to F1 this year.

Barierka w kt?â??r?äÔǪ wjecha?àÔÇÜ Kubica mog?àÔÇÜa by?äÔÇí uszkodzona (F1 Fan Club)

This video shows the segment of barrier Kubica hit was broken before the impact:

Thanks to pawelF1 for the tip.

Symonds takes on Virgin role (Autosport)

“Pat Symonds is to return to Formula 1 in a consultancy role after agreeing a deal to help out the Virgin Racing team.”

Karun Chandhok on Twitter

“It’s official -on Tuesday afternoon I will see the Senna movie thanks to Manish Pandey!”

Via the Live F1 Twitter app

Renault on Twitter

“Robert had further surgery today to his foot, shoulder, humerous, and anterior elbow. All four operations went well.”

Via the Live F1 Twitter app

Huge start crash in GP2 Asia at Abu Dhabi

Fortunately the drivers involved were unharmed. Jules Bianchi won the GP2 Asia season opener from Romain Grosjean.

Follow F1 news as it breaks using the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app.

Comment of the day

Michael Schumacher’s fatest lap in testing yesterday drew a lot of comment. Here’s what Sammy Dulledge had to say:

I know it may be just practice, and the times mean nothing, but this does prove that Michael still has the skill, to set a time faster than anyone elses. I can be pretty certain that he wasn’t the only one who may have gone for a fast time.

Schumacher showed great spurts of genius in a car that wasn’t up to scratch (Korea, Spain etc.) and as long as he gets the car underneath him, then times like that should be following in the future, he can be an octochamp!

From the forum

Hare proposes a pact to keeping calling the Ferrari F150th Italia the F150

Happy birthday!

No F1 Fanatic birthdays today. If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is by emailling me, using Twitter or adding to the list here.

On this day in F1

The first new Lotus F1 car for 16 years was launched on this day last year:

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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42 comments on “Kubica aims to return to F1 this year”

  1. in the spirit of polishboy808 from yesterday, First! and, tut tut not exatcly on mid-night today, standards are dropping. hehe.

    1. sorry, i got some inane thrill out of that. that crash in the gp2 race was brutal, last time we had a car stall on the grid during an actual start in f1 was ages ago. anybody know an exact date?

      1. Does Sakon Yamamoto hitting his pitlane limiter at the start of the German Grand Prix count?

        1. I don’t think anything with sakon yamamoto counts.

      2. Barichello going into “anti-stall mode” in the Brawn, I think he did it twice in 2009.

        1. indeed, but I meant, physically not moving. barichello got going after about half a second.

          1. Barichello in Sepang last year?

        2. Barrichello in Turkey, Button at Spa – both Brawn’s in 2009!

          1. No, it was Barrichello at Spa too.

            Button got away normally then was taken out by Grosjean, along with Hamilton and Alguersuari.

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqzieUS-X8U&feature=related

      3. Huelkenberg in Japan?

      4. near miss form pole position, Vettel Japan 2010, almost stared in neutral. Youtube jumpstart japanses GP, luckily start lights stayed on for awhile!

  2. 4 weeks and 11 hours until the first qualifying session of 2011!!

    1. Wow, so soon. :D I feel giddy!

  3. It doesn’t so much look like that armco is broken as much as it looks like there are two pieces that overlap slightly but aren’t attached to one another. It’s hard to tell at that speed and resolution. In any case it is definitely something that should have been looked at prior to the stage.

    I’m glad Kubica’s as determined as he is to bounce back from his injury. If anyone can use their mental strength to recover more quickly and fully it’s Robert Kubica. I have no doubt he’ll be back on the grid next year, but I’ll be surprised if we see him back this season. It’d be great to see him along Heidfeld at the end of the season, if he heals up quickly and Petrov is significantly outperformed by Heidfeld.

    1. It looks like the two sections don’t line up. Definitely not installed as per the specification. I wouldn’t like to be the civil engineer that certified the installation of that barrier. Won’t be long until Kubica’s lawyers are chasing them down, looking for some compensation.

      1. Yeah, they definitely aren’t attached to each other whatever the reason, and that’s clearly what caused the accident to be so bad. If they’d been properly bolted together he would’ve just slid along the barrier and probably come to a rest, or possibly even regained control of the car, as that simulation (which looks fairly convincing to me) shows the car didn’t spin around until it was harpooned by the second section of barrier. As you say, I’m sure some lawyers will be interested in talking with whatever municipality is responsible for those barriers.

    2. Indeed, plus there was a lot of sections similar to that along the route.

  4. New gravatar time!

  5. wow that gp2 crash is huge! What on earth was the guy in the yellow car doing (don’t know the name sorry)! Very lucky there were no injuries.

    Was the race good? Or was it a standard abu dhabi affair?

    1. Will Buxton tweeted yesterday that it had been a bit dull with very little overtaking. He wondered whether it was the cars, the circuit or just everybody being conservative in the first race of the series.

      Probably a bit of all three, I’d suggest.

  6. Interesting to see the GP2 podium was made up of Lotus, Renault (Now Lotus in F1) and Team AirAsia (Team Lotus in F1).

    1. Also interesting that the ‘Renault’ was running in the classic 2010 wasp livery rather than the nice-but-not-as-nice black and gold

      1. That’s probably because they have no affiliation with Group Lotus, who are sponsoring ART in GP2. Really confusing with essentially three different Group Lotus and/or Team Lotus affiliated teams on the podium.

      2. As I wrote yesterday, it was the Ferrari junior driver who won in the Group Lotus sponsored car with a Team Lotus type livery, beating the Lotus Renault GP third driver in last year’s Renault junior team…

  7. I’m amazed how little the fans in that GP2 video seem to react to a huge crash taking place a few metres away, @1.50. One of them is walking up the stairs, not even looking! Very odd.

    Actually, this leads me to a conspiracy theory. If F1 couldn’t even draw 40,000 fans to the Yas Marina circuit then what hope does GP2 have? I think that in order to make the grandstands look a bit fuller the circuit officals put a load of robots in the stands. Clearly, they didn’t quite get the cyber-emotions right, which explains their lack of reaction

    1. The V8 Supercars are also there is weekend.

  8. “I know it may be just practice, and the times mean nothing, but this does prove that Michael still has the skill, to set a time faster than anyone elses.”

    Hmmm. Doesn’t really prove anything for the reasons you give at the start of your sentence. It is encouraging however.

    1. That’s kinda cause you cut out the next part of the comment, where I mentioned that he was probably not the only one to be going for a fast lap time, Admittedly the Red Bulls might be sandbagging, but I don’t think all the front runners would have been…

  9. I think may be a car passing in front of this car may have hit the barrier & have made that broken that,the question remains why didn’t the organizer saw that & made any move on that? If that was fixed I think the damage that had happened with Kubica could have been limited.

    Why is a cheater coming back to F1 & how on earth will the FIA & other organizer like FOTA will allow that?

    Bad accident for GP good to see that they all are well.

    1. Those barriers don’t break like that if hit by a vehicle, rather they deflect and get also sort of mashed up, but stay as one continuous length of barrier.

      To me it looks like a dodgy installation job.

    2. I dont think its a car hit. It definetely looks like those particular segment of the barrier weren’t bolted properly.

      Regarding Symonds(and Briatore), FIA and FOTA can do nothing, as the court ruled in their favour=that FIA had no right to ban them from the sport. So, as long as there’s a team to employ him, Symonds is good to go, and that can’t be good for F1(pun not intended sorry)

    3. I think a powerful point is being made with regard to how Symonds has pretty much been welcomed back into F1 with open arms: if you’re good enough at your job, you can get away with absolutely anything in F1.

      1. Given that F1 ceased being motorsport the second the movable rear wing rule came into effect, I suppose it hardly matters if Briatore is back or not. Why bother keeping the weasel out of the henhouse when the farmer’s already killed them all himself?

  10. Bird will fly

    1. fish will swim

  11. In that video, you can see someone make the most blatant corner-cut ever, it made me chuckle a little.

  12. Okay, that’s just weird, for my first comment on the forums to be selected as ‘Comment of the Day’…

    1. Didn’t realise it was your first one – well done! I think that has happened to someone else once before.

  13. Hello Keith,

    I don’t know if anyone have already suggested this, but I was thinking if we could donate some money for a get-well present for Robert Kubica from all his fans at F1Fanatic? Would that be possible?

    1. there is a nice idea at f1zone.pl, they collect kubica fans (fans, friends, supporters whatever) photos to make a big mosaic photo for kubica. maybe f1f society could join this action, but there would be nessesary to translate a page or make step by step how to add a photo for english speakers… i can make it if some people are interested. and i hope that f1zone.pl admins will make it happen :)

  14. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12430091

    Go to the 7th picture.

    If that car had hit that armco just a few more inches to the side, it would have gone straight through him. Wow. Just wow.

  15. Jon Barnard (@)
    15th February 2011, 8:13

    Hopefully Kubica will be back before the end of the season! He is a great driver and got some really good results last season in a car that was far from the best.

    Mclaren to win this season though, come on Hamilton and Button, win it for the Brits

Comments are closed.