Kubica expected to wake up on Saturday to the substitute driver’s usual routine of sitting at the occasional debriefing, combined with a lot of hanging around in the Alfa Hospitality building.
Instead, he was quickly pushed into the cockpit of Raikkonen’s C41 after the Finn tested positive for COVID-19.
Two years after his last and very frustrating season with Williams, Kubica will finish his 98 minutes of the race at the age of 36.
It’s another chapter in an extraordinary career that took a very different turn after its rally accident just over a decade ago.
“You are prepared,” he said after qualifying. “Because it’s in your contract and your position, you know your position very well. But to be honest, maybe I’m too old, but I never really thought it could happen.
“Of course you know there is a chance, but you don’t want it to really happen because in the end it means something happened to your teammates. But that’s part of the game, part of my ‘position on the team.”
Robert Kubica, test and reserve driver, Alfa Romeo Racing and Antonio Giovinazzi, Alfa Romeo Racing
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
After a normal day on the slopes on Friday, when he went to bed he had no idea that a busy Saturday was ahead of him.
“Well, to be honest, I woke up this morning,” he explained. “So I hear something ringing, my room phone, but I thought it was next door. So I woke up and didn’t understand what was going on. Then I checked my cell phone, I saw missed calls from Fred.” [Vasseur].
“At first I thought I had tested positive because I arrived here late, I was in Warsaw with our partner Orlen until Thursday afternoon. Then I opened the phone and I see no, I’m negative, and at the same time I called Fred on.
“So if you get a call early in the morning, you of course know that something is going on. And the team will probably need me. Then I waited until 9 o’clock. ” [after the curfew] and we could go to the paddock to start work.
“And from then on, let’s say, no more boring Saturday for me! And it became a pretty hectic and pretty challenging Saturday in overalls.”
Kubica has enjoyed three FP1 outings with Alfa this year: in Barcelona, Austria, and just a few weeks ago in Hungary. As such, he knows the C41 and its quirks.
However, jumping into an hour-long session on such a tricky track, which he last tried in his F3 days in 2004, was no easy task.
Antonio Giovinazzi, Alfa Romeo Racing C41, Robert Kubica, Alfa Romeo Racing C41
Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images
In the end, Kubica did what was necessary and brought the car safely into the race in 18th place, ahead of the two Haas drivers.
Even for a driver with Kubica’s experience, braking to the limit in qualifying was perhaps the biggest challenge.
“Turn 3 was always a big challenge, I mainly think that I lost there the last time in the morning. But I improved a bit in qualifying. It’s not often that you can drive in such a steep turn. Even Kimi was also struggled in turns 2 and 3.
“This is something new, but if you have no idea about the car, about the tires and then add some really high lean angles, it goes step by step. And as I said, the approach was the right one for me.
“Of course I could do a lot better. But with the risk you have to take with these cars in qualifying, and this morning some drivers made mistakes again – I’m not stupid and I know where my place is.”
With his run at Le Mans, Kubica arrived at Zandvoort fit for a race. However, he says the many miles in a sports car this season actually meant a difficult transition back to F1.
“Endurance races are a new challenge, it’s nice. But I’ll say again that I didn’t qualify at Le Mans this year.
“From Barcelona, for my first race so far, I’ve only fitted new tires twice in all of my sessions, there I usually work at race pace with used tires and set up the car with heavy fuel.
# 41 Team WRT Oreca 07 – Gibson LMP2, Robert Kubica, Louis Delétraz, Yifei Ye
Photo by: Paul Foster
“In any case, it’s so different that it’ll probably get better if I’m not racing! Because you are used to something and then you realize that braking at the 60-meter mark in Turn 1 is too late or 50 meters too early.
“And your brain tells you fine, but usually what you’ve been through in the last month will put you back on 120. So there are a lot of mental things.”
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With Sergio Perez, who starts from the back of the field, Kubica moves up to 17th place. It won’t be easy to move forward on sheer performance from then on, but this will likely be an attrition with a lot going on.
Can he survive and make it into the top 10? What a great story it would be, especially after the Le Mans disappointment.
“Life can have bad and good days. I think, unfortunately, I am a good example of what happened in my life.
“A good example, because in the end it will be my third time, say, as a newcomer to F1. So I did 2006, 2019 and this time. The circumstances are not the same because we know the reason why I’m here, but that’s the way it is. “
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