January 8, 2014

Robert Kubica drove his Ford like a man possessed.

Photo via Racingist.com
Robert Kubica's first rally as a Ford driver had not gone entirely to plan as he lined up for the start of the final stage at the European Rally Championship's Jännerrallye-Oberösterreich ,   a tarmac event in Austria.

The polish ace was over 11 seconds behind the leader and road conditions were awful, a mixture of black ice and mud making the final stage treacherous.   Kubica, running up against his tire allotment, had to use two studded tires and two of the more preferable snows, mixed diagonally.

After just a few of the 25 km of the stage he slips off an nails one of the snow markers...

The impact knocked loose one of his auxiliary lights which, still attached to its harness, shines back into the cabin...

...which is not ideal when you are driving in the woods...

and the road starts to get shrouded in fog...

Better to shut them off and drive blind then...  except Kubica misses a note while looking for the switch and nearly collects a couple of poles and a house.

Despite all that, Kubica won the stage by 34 seconds over his main rival taking the overall win by almost 20 seconds,  a miracle.     But then Kubica knows miracles well.    

Gratulacje Robert!

5 comments:

  1. Undoubtably a great drive, but not really a miracle, the then leader was on slicks.
    http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/112027

    I'm really looking forward to seeing how Robert gets on next year though!

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  2. I would say a miracle he did not crash (...more than he did) !

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  3. And this is why on my rally cars I always wired the lights in pairs. The two outer ones were wired to one switch, the two inner ones to another. Something like this happens, you just turn off the outer set.


    A most impressive drive. It's no use him buying a lotto ticket at the end of the stage -- he's already used up all his luck for the day.

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  4. OH ,man... that was close.


    Robert please lift up a little bit!!!! or put him on a closed circuit with the appropriate security measures!


    I would love him back on F1 in Ferrari with Alonso, they would be the perfect team to me.


    Shame it will never happen.

    ReplyDelete
  5. take a look

    http://youtu.be/6imD6_ppMjk

    http://youtu.be/n2_NP_X2gHg

    ReplyDelete

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