Unfortunatly a seat has became available

The F1 silly season seems to be over earlier and earlier every year, seats are sorted and out of work drivers need to find somewhere else to race. Over the weekend one of the mid-field drivers was involved in a rally accident and unfortunately a seat at Lotus-Renault is available.

The casual fan may have heard of Robert Kubica, Over the last couple of years with Renault he has made many people take a little notice of his speed. Despite his relative anonymity when compares to Lewis Hamilton and Seb Vettel he’s thought of one as one of the faster drivers out there. A few months ago I said “Kubica has shown he belongs at the sharp end of the grid with some great drives in mid-table machinery”.

He got his break in 2006 when Jacques Villeneuve left Sauber and Kubica stepped in. He turned out to be substantially quicker than the former world Champion, being a lot cheaper probably helped him stick with Sauber too.

Despite being new at this level he was far quicker than his teammate, the experienced and highly regarded Nick Heidfeld. He finished on the podium in only his third GP. It’s wrong to say that he’s been “discovered” over the last couple of years, since that first half-season with Sauber he’s been touted as a future world champions, with the huge caveat – if only he could get the right equipment.

He often beat Lewis Hamilton when they were both racing carts. Hamilton has consistently been very complementary about Kubica and once called him a future World Champion.

In the sport there are dozens of drivers that were good enough to have been world champion,  except they were missing the right car/engine/team/luck and so on. There are lots of little indicators that indicate someone might be a little special, and most of them are present for Kubica.

Top three qualifying performances at the three best drivers circuits last year (Spa, Monaco and Suzuka) show that maybe the machinery was slower than he was. His reputation is as a fast driver, I found a quote from the technical director of Renault (or Lotus-Renault now) “You know that if the car is not running at the front, it’s because of the car, not him.”

A lot of speculation surrounds who is going to replace him at Lotus-Renault. Indications are he will be out for the year, F1 drivers are motivated men and history says he could be back sooner than that. The reserve drivers are Bruno Senna and Roman Grosjean, both would see out of their depth in the car, especially with Petrov only in his second year of racing.

Nico Hulkenberg seems the obvious candidate to me, he is Force India’s reserve driver, but I imagine they could find a way to get him in the car. He had an impressive year with Williams and I believe he only lost the drive because he could not match the millions brought in by Pastor Maldonado.

Pedro De La Rosa seems another solid choice, he’s been testing for Pirelli for the last year and has plenty of miles under his belt as a driver and test driver for teams like McLaren. Plus he’s probably got more miles on the new tyres than every other driver combined.

Who else is there? There are plenty of experienced hands out there. Nick Heidfeld seems to be the most often mentioned, Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi had some good moments for Force India last year and is without a drive. Kimi Raikkonen, Christian Klein, Jacques Villeneuve and (this has to be a joke answer) Piquet Jr have all been linked to the drive somewhere on the rumour friendly internet.

A massive blow to Kubica, a huge loss for Lotus-Renault, here is hoping he will be back with his old speed sooner rather than later. However, I bet Renault will not let him go rallying again any time soon.