In his new career, following on from Formula One, Robert Kubica has shown real pace in the sport of rallying, taking on the best drivers on the planet and the most challenging roads. But despite a stellar 2013 year in WRC2 where he won the championship handily, the Pole has struggled since making the change-up to full WRC.
His woes began on his debut WRC event, a one-off drive for the Citroen WRC team, with a crash early in the event which effectively robbed him of both the valuable experience, and the glory, that many believed were inevitable.
Having secured Lotos backing to undertake a full season of WRC in 2014, and managed by Malcolm Wilson's M-Sport outfit, the future for "Bobby K" looked bright. The M-Sport honcho was full of praise for the Pole's talent and it was clear he was expecting much from the driver.
Fast forward to April 4 2014 and the picture is not quite so rosy. In fact, in each of the five WRC events Kubica has competed in, he has crashed out and failed to gain a single WRC championship point. He may complete the Rally de Portugal with the help of WRC2, where the diver can retire on the day of the accident, take a time penalty for that retirement, but re-start the following day if the car is cleared as safe to compete by the technical staff of the rally. So it's possible that he may yet get into the points on this event despite the crash.
But it's not the best way to impress a sponsor, team managers or your fans.
Being totally candid, I admit to being less enthusiastic about Kubica than the majority of the rally media have been. There have been many predictions of "Bobby K"'s ascendancy within rallying, especially during 2013's WRC2 campaign where it seemed to some that he could do no wrong.
But there were indicators even during those heady days that the winning margins the Pole was achieving were in many cases down to the misfortune of his rivals, and his performance, while impressive by any standard, can be seen in retrospect as having a decent dollop of luck as well.
Since then, the talent has been present for the most part, but the luck apparently has not.
It would be helpful at this point to define "luck". During his WRC2 championship year, Kubica competed with drivers who were closer in experience and raw talent to him, and with his natural ability and love of high speed, he was competitive in almost all circumstances. So luck can be regarded as not suffering the more extreme consequences that his nearest competitors did when making similar missteps.
Now though, Kubica has been transplanted into a rarified atmosphere inhabited by rallying's best, and the equivalence that was his advantage in 2013 has evaporated. His natural competitiveness and speed are nothing in the WRC environment - everybody there has those attributes. So where is Kubica lacking?
In a word, teamwork.
Robert Kubica has graduated to rallying from Formula One where your performance in the car is a solo affair, and he was without doubt qualified to compete there. There can be little doubt that he was fast, clever and skilled behind the wheel of an F1 machine, and coupled with his ambition, he was a formidable opponent. With the right team and car, it's hard to believe that he would not have won many races and won championships.
But sadly, and ironically, RK's fortunes changed while he was indulging his desire to enjoy a bit of rallying. A serious crash resulted in multiple injuries caused by a roadside barrier, the most lasting being the partial severing of his forearm. It was this injury and its effect on Kubica's mobility in the cockpit of an F1 vehicle that spelled the end of his Formula One career.
Those very qualities that made the Pole such a talent on the racing circuits of the F1 world, are less desirable in a WRC rally car. There, the driver and co-driver are both parts of a whole - the driver's life is in the hands of the co-driver; the co-driver's life is in the hands of his driver. The cockpit of a Ford Fiesta WRC is no place to be dependent on just the reflexes and intuition of the person in the driver seat. The pace notes are the glue that holds the crew's performance together, and absolute trust is the only means to release the crew's true potential.
For further evidence of the difficulty that ex-F1 drivers' experience and qualities can generate, you might look no further than those that another, earlier convert experienced. Kimi Raikkonen appeared to possess every quality a rally driver would need - skillful, intelligent, athletic, fast and fearless - but he couldn't make the grade either. A coincidence? I think not...
But there's hope for Kubica yet. He can learn to trust his co-driver and his co-driver can learn to trust him. But only if they can both learn to trust the notes, And that will only be possible if they go back to school and learn their trades, together, outside of the pressures of WRC sponsors, fans and media.
Then the Kubica of the hype and promise will deliver.
And then, the other WRC stars will dismiss him at their peril.
[Update: WRC.com are reporting that Kubica will not re-start the Rally de Portugal for Sunday's final three stages, following his crash on Saturday, so his retirement from the event appears to be a done deal. Five DNFs for five WRC events are the sorry record.]
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