The feel-good 24 Hours of Le Mans win that helps answer one of F1’s biggest what-ifs

The 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans won’t go down in the history books as being a classic. Across the race on 14/15 June, just once did the safety car make an appearance, while a completely non-existent threat of rain meant there wasn’t much jeopardy thrown at a largely bulletproof grid of 62 cars across the Hypercar, LMP2 and LMGT3 classes.

Still, there were flashes of intrigue. The early rocket start for the No.5 Porsche Penske Motorsport in the first hour offered some early credence to Ferrari’s pre-race comments that it wasn’t starting as favourite - something its lacklustre qualifying of seventh for the No.50 car, 11th for the No.51 and 13th for the eventual race-winning No.83 machine offered credence to.

Ferrari ultimately assumed control of the race after the first six hours as it occupied the top three spots in the outright classification. Penalties for the No.50 and No.51 cars later in the night for yellow flag infringements, some team orders drama and late-race technical gremlins for the two factory 499Ps kept the door open for a possible shock before the chequered flag.

Indeed, heading into the final hour, the No.6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 being driven by Kevin Estre - who came from last in class at the start - had split the Ferraris and hovered at an uncomfortable 10-15 seconds behind the leading No.83.

But even he thought any attack was unlikely: “I mean they [Ferrari] had so much the upper hand throughout the race that to lose all that pace in the last hour would be strange.”

Estre said the only hope was for that reasonably slender margin could pile some pressure on the No.83 car into a mistake. It had been off at one stage during the race while being told to move aside for one of the factory cars, after all.

But a five-stinting, sleep-deprived 40-year-old Robert Kubica, despite discomfort from a broken cooling tube in the cockpit and still a little seething from factory Ferraris not listening to team orders around the 19-hour mark, wasn’t going to let victory at Le Mans slip from his grasp again.

In 2021, in his debut at the event, he was on course for victory in the LMP2 class before a final-lap technical issue pushed the car into a heartbreaking retirement. Though, as he revealed to the media last Sunday, his disappointments were quite quickly put to one side when his prize for winning LMP2 was pointed out to him.

“I was convinced that you got a Rolex for winning LMP2,” he started. “And then of course our sister car won and after the race I said ‘where is the Rolex?’ And they said ‘no, we didn’t get it’. Then I felt better. It gave me some relief. I said ‘Ok, it’s not as bad as I thought to retire! I’m super happy, because in the end it’s not something you can buy.”

Of course, outright victory at Le Mans, in a Ferrari, means a little bit more to Kubica than just a watch…

Kubica’s Le Mans win wasn’t without its challenges

It wouldn’t be overstating things to say that Kubica was an absolute stud when he came to F1 in 2007 with BMW. A consistent top six finisher, the podium seemed a certainty at some stage. Indeed, he stood on the podium just two rounds into 2008 and took a maiden victory in that year’s Canadian Grand Prix.

The win in itself was quite something when you take into account just a year earlier in Montreal Kubica’s race ended in a violent shunt on the approach to the hairpin towards the end of the lap. Testament to modern safety standards, he walked away with an ankle injury and missed only the following US round at Indianapolis (opening the door for Sebastien Vettel to make his F1 debut as a stand-in).

An uncompetitive BMW in 2009 stunted Kubica’s progress, but his talent never deserted him, and he was back on the podium again in 2010 following a switch to Renault. For Ferrari, its future F1 title hopes firmly rested on his shoulders as it put a deal in place for him to join the team for the 2012 campaign.

And then it was all cruelly snatched away from him early in February in 2011 when he crashed during the Ronde di Andorra rally. The fast crash into a guardrail left him with serious arm injuries that completely derailed his racing career. He recovered enough to begin racing again in 2013, returning to rallying and winning the WRC 2 title.

He began dabbling in sportscar racing a few years later and would end up back on the F1 grid in 2019 with Williams. But so much time away from F1 coupled with uncompetitive machinery yielded a single point for Kubica. After 2019, he took up sportscar racing full-time in the World Endurance Championship and immediately made an impression.

The disappointment of his first Le Mans visit in 2021 couldn’t mask the speed he still possessed to compete in major events, with a brace of seconds in the following years backing that up before AF Corse snatched him up to drive the customer Ferrari 499P Hypercar last year. Le Mans didn’t go to plan as the No.83 retired, but the car won at the COTA round of the WEC.

At Le Mans this year, the No.83 driven by Kubica, Yifei Ye and Phil Hanson, didn’t have an easy run of it. A reasonably slow start from 13th saw the bright yellow AF Corse car make little progress. Kubica also revealed that he battled a downshifting problem all race, while the balance of the car wasn’t what it had been previously.

“It was bad all the 24 hours,” he said of the downshifting issues. “Unfortunately it happened when we fitted the race gearbox. We thought this was something related with the settings, but it was not. So it was a tough one, especially in some corners it was really, really on the edge. And again adding another stress. We managed, we tried to help with the driving style, with the brake shapes and stuff like this. But in the end it was just covering the issue, not curing it.”

But the ‘other’ headache Kubica speaks of is a team orders fiasco in the latter hours of the race. Having twice been told to move aside for the factory cars previously, the No.83 found itself on the other end of team order calls around hour 18 when the No.51 of Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado and Antonio Giovinazzi was told to move aside.

The instruction was passed on, but it wasn’t executed during that hour. Kubica cut a furious figure on the radio, noting that twice the No.83 had obeyed these orders earlier in the race. He then ran off at the Mulsanne corner, letting the No.51 pull further away out of the window to slow and drop behind.

Kubica had to be cooled down by his race engineer, but his outburst was justified and well-argued - demonstrating just how much fight the Pole still has in him, something that Ferrari could do well to maintain with a factory team promotion in the coming years.

The No.83 would eventually find itself in a commanding lead by the start of hour 21, as a strategy variation allowed it to jump the No.50 and No.51 cars through ensuing pitstop phases. The latter also suffered from a poorly-timed Full Course Yellow in hour 20 forcing it to make two fuel stops, with it spinning on pit-entry for the second.

After the race, Kubica was still clearly annoyed by the team orders situation and felt it put him into an “unnecessary” risk for the final push with the No.6 Porsche being peddled hard by Estre not as far behind as he would have liked.

“We did play the team player, the 83,” Kubica said. “We tried to help where we could, but I felt like we shouldn’t have been there in that position, especially that we had more pace and being stuck behind the other car, you are just destroying your tyres and losing performance. So, when you see the gap to the [No.6] Porsche, I think it was correct to push and we couldn’t. You never know at Le Mans: it’s better to have 40 seconds advantage than three seconds. It makes your life easier. It was not nice, to be honest.

“I understand everyone is trying to do things for themselves, but there are respect things and once there is a call that we are not racing each other and then you see the other car overtaking your team-mate and not giving back the position. And we were chasing because of that. Finally, it didn’t change the final result, fortunately, but it definitely put much more stress and much more risks, sometimes an unnecessary risk.”

Ferrari defended its race management strategy, but was also happy to conceded that the late problems for the No.51 and No.50 cars meant without the No.83 it would not be celebrating a third successive Le Mans victory.

Kubica’s win not being dragged down by past missed chances

While the overall results sheet paints a picture many predicted - a Ferrari win - there is no avoiding the poignancy of the No.83 car taking to the top step. Kubica has become the first Polish driver to win Le Mans outright, while team-mate Yifei Ye is the first Chinese competitor to do so.

But the real significance is the closing of a circle for Kubica, one that started when he signed his Ferrari F1 contract prior to his career-altering injury almost 15 years ago.

As mentioned earlier, Kubica’s form in F1 was that of a driver good enough to join a top team and likely fight for championships. That reality will never be realised, but his drive last Sunday at Le Mans - alongside his No.83 stablemates - will go a long to proving that his star only would have risen higher without his injuries.

When he came to speak to the media, he cut a tired but contented figure. There was emotion, but this wasn’t a driver dwelling on the past.

“I mean, not really,” he said of this felt like a closed chapter. “What happened many, many years ago with my accident when I had signed already for Ferrari will never come back. But I accepted that. In the end I will not be here if I would not be..... maybe not fully healed, but still for many, many years there were moments where you were living with some kind of what if? Finally, I managed to move forward. I started racing back. I started looking forward.”

The 24 Hours of Le Mans is a merciless beast, with little regard for hard work and personal sacrifice. Kubica is one of countless over the last 93 runnings of the event who can attest to this. But sometimes, just sometimes, Le Mans allows for a happy ending.

And that’s what Ferrari, the No.83 AF Corse car, and Robert Kubica got in 2025…