Kubica’s F1 career at risk after crash

Robert Kubica

LONDON, (Reuters) – Robert Kubica’s Formula One career  hung in the balance yesterday after a high-speed crash in a  minor rally in Italy left the Renault driver fighting to save  the use of his right hand.

Robert Kubica

His team said the Pole, who went through seven hours of  surgery involving seven doctors split into two teams to attend  to multiple fractures to his right leg and arm, had been put  into an induced coma.

The season starts in Bahrain on March 13 but surgeon Mario  Igor Rossello told reporters at the Santa Corona hospital in  Pietra Ligure near Genoa that it could take a year for the  26-year-old to recover.

“We will see in the next days what will happen,” he said.

“The danger is that in five or seven days we have vascular  problems. He could have surgery again to resolve the problems,”  added Rossello, while also offering a glimmer of hope.

“Drivers are always very special patients. I have a lot of  motorbike patients and they heal in the fastest way possible,  much faster than normal people.”
Rossello said in a later Renault statement that Kubica’s  right forearm was cut in two places with significant lesions to  the bones and tendons.
“At the end of the operation, Robert’s hand was well  vascularised and warm, which is encouraging,” he added.

With testing under way in Spain already and the first race  of the season in Bahrain on March 13, his Lotus-backed team will  surely have to find a replacement for one of the most popular  and competitive drivers on the grid.

Kubica, a race winner in Canada in 2008 with BMW-Sauber, was  Renault’s big hope of starting the season with a splash.