F1: Kubica starts slow recovery

It's not the first time Robert Kubica has ended up in hospital with a serious injury after crashing a car. The first time it was a road car and he has the titanium bolts in his arm to prove it. Incredibly, after what many consider the crash of the year in the Canadian Grand Prix in 2007, he walked away with little more than bumps and bruises, a testimony to the safety of the modern F1 car. See an extract from German TV coverage, showing much more than the crash, at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e64_1181508083

But Sunday's crash in a rally car in Andorra, after completing the Valencia F1 test, was the one that has most nearly ended his racing career. For sure, Alex Zanardi has raced without legs since hitting the wall at Lauzitzring in a 2001 Indycar race. But racing a car modified for hand-use only is one thing: a one-armed racing driver would face an entirely different set of circumstances, starting with the problem of how to brace in corners.

Doctors were enigmatic: pestered by journalists as to whether Kubica was to lose his arm, they would say only that they were assessing the situation. His team, Renault (which calls itself Lotus Renault even though the F1 website maintains last season's name), issued a stream of statements ranging from the fraught to the hopeful.

The story so far is not glamorous but it is positive: the main concern was over a badly shattered hand. A long operation by specialists on hand as soon Kubica arrived at an Italian hospital by helicopter from the crash scene, has restored some functionality in Kubica's fingers: his right forearm was "reconstructed" in a seven hour operation. After surgery, he was kept asleep by drugs, but was woken for some tests: during those tests he was able to move his fingers. That shows that the arm, not just the hand, is also working, at least to a degree.

But the surgery is not over: today work will begin on his right shoulder and right foot. Next week, he will have yet more surgery - on his right elbow. There are no plans to move him from the Santa Corona hospital for at least two weeks.

The hospital at Pietra Ligure, Savona, Italy, is a specialist trauma centre. Kubica was flown there by helicopter immediately after the accident. Andorra is a mountain autonomous territory on the French / Spanish border - but the Ronda de Andora Rally is in Italy.

While some are talking up the chances of a return to F1 before the end of 2011, realistically a fully competitive drive looks unlikely at this point.

A blogger, Miko?aj Sokó?, who claims to be both a journalist and a friend of Kubica says that the efforts to extract Kubica from the car and the scene were both long and "not very efficient." He goes on to say "Robert was fighting for his life... doctors concentrated on saving his life more than healing the injuries."

Kubica is the latest in a long line of drivers to have suffered off-season injuries doing action sports or racing / rallying in other formulae. At the end of last season, Mark Webber announced he was going, at last, to get an off-season injury fixed having raced all year with pain. And Michael Schumacher's return to F1 was in doubt due to neck injuries suffered in a motorcycling accident.