RBS ambassador and three-time world champion Sir Jackie Stewart provided a unique insight to the mind of an F1 driver after Robert Kubica put the horror of last year's Montreal smash behind him to win this year's Canadian Grand Prix.
"Robert Kubica drove a very good race. In the closing laps, he will have been looking for trouble everywhere. Every little vibration makes you fear a mechanical failure. You're frightened you're going to make a mistake, and you can't believe the situation you're in. You try to put it out of your mind, but nevertheless you're very wound up about it. You just concentrate on making no errors.
Any driver's first win is enormously important. Kubica hasn't waited long to break his duck. The young man has done immensely well in a very short time. It's a giant step for forward for Kubica, which will give him tremendous confidence. And on top of everything else, he's the first Polish driver to ever win a major motor racing event. It's also a great success for BMW to finish first and second.
Kubica's crash last year was enormous – as big as any accident I've ever seen a driver survive. He won't have had a problem coming back to the circuit, though. Racing drivers have a good mentality for those sorts of things. They have the mind management to be able to handle it – although maybe not as much as we did in my day, as it happens so much less often now.
The RBS-sponsored AT&T Williams team looked extremely competitive all weekend, and they truly deserved a podium finish – although it was not to be. For the rest of his life, Nico Rosberg will never forget his accident in the pit lane. He knew that the red light was on – the team had told him on the radio. But he was taken by surprise, braked too late, and crashed into the back of Lewis Hamilton's car. A few moments before, Hamilton had also been told that the red light was on, and the same thing had happened: he crashed into Kimi Raikkonen. That was the 'Make it happen' moment of the race. Hamilton and Raikonnen's cars were both badly damaged, and when Rosberg came onto the scene the whole thing became quite bizarre."
