Robert Kubica hopes his remarkable journey from life-threatening accident to the top step of the podium in the world’s greatest motor race can help to inspire others facing challenges and tough times, as he hinted that he is open to the idea of one day turning his extraordinary story into a documentary.
On 6 February, 2011, Kubica’s life changed forever when a high-speed impact with a barrier during an off-season rally outing in Andorra left him with serious arm injuries that stopped his burgeoning momentum abruptly in its tracks.
At the time, the Pole was a Formula 1 front-runner, tipped as a world champion in the making. Although he would bravely return to the sport’s top-flight eight years later – after forging a successful rallying career in the meantime that yielded a dominant WRC2 Drivers’ title – in 2021, he turned his attentions to endurance racing. He has not looked back.
In his maiden campaign in the discipline, Kubica showcased his versatile skillset by clinching the European Le Mans Series’ LMP2 class crown – a result he would repeat three years later – while in 2023, he prevailed at the same level in the FIA World Endurance Championship.
The Kraków native stepped up to FIA WEC’s premier Hypercar category in 2024, immediately establishing himself as a leading contender in AF Corse’s Ferrari 499P. Sharing the Italian prototype with namesake Robert Shwartzman and Yifei Ye, he triumphed at Austin’s Circuit of The Americas in September, before making headlines all around the world last month, when he produced an outstanding drive to win the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans alongside Ye and Philip Hanson.
The result was unquestionably the biggest achievement of a career that has not been short of highlights – many of which have been accomplished against almost inconceivable odds. One day, those achievements may just make it all the way to the big screen…
“In the past, I received some approaches from companies to create a documentary, because of my accident and road back to Formula 1,” revealed the 40-year-old, who currently sits second with Ye and Hanson in FIA WEC’s Hypercar Drivers’ classification, 12 points shy of the summit of the standings. “I said no because I felt I had some more pages of my racing story still to write before doing that.
“To be honest, I don’t know if I will do it or not but for sure, we saw after Le Mans a lot of people who don’t normally watch racing approached me or wrote to me saying my story had made them emotional, so I think we went beyond sport with the win, which is nice.
“Obviously, I would prefer not to have had the accident. My life has changed in many ways, but I’m happy that I managed to come back to the sport and do the things I loved as a kid. Maybe this will be the aspect I would like to talk about, because I think there are many people who are struggling and most of the time, it is us who put the limits on our brain.
“That causes a big fight internally, but I think our brains are much more powerful than we realise, and that we as human beings are capable of doing incredible things. This is an area in which I feel I could help.”
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