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.
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.