BMW's Early Birds: Not Quite Getting the Worm

Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld are both amazing racing talents. Kubica was the outstanding star of last season.

Had it not been for his team’s insistence on beginning work on improving the teams’ prospects for the following season the pole could easily have provided an unexpected challenge to the finale of the title fight between Felipe Massa and Lewis Hamilton.

But yet the sporting world accepted his teams frustrating lack of pace for the prospect of a future force to be reckoned with.

Sadly however as today’s Chinese Grand Prix showed the extra work insisted upon has come up with absolutely nothing worthy of note.

Kubica obviously has to take some of the responsibility for the failings. His qualifying performance was poor. For a driver who massively outperformed his car last season, he portrayed a sub standard figure of his former self, leaving his race credentials aiming for a point or two at best.

Even worse was the reality that was to fall upon the BMW duo during the race itself. Their race pace was so far removed from the spectacular that neither managed to produce a display that demanded a response from us watching spectators.

And so now we have to witness the demoralising scenes of woe from a team of two optimistic drivers promised so much when their team gave up on their 2008 car. Their expectations of a brighter future to come, at this precise moment are seemingly in tatters.

Alongside the likes of Ferrari and Mclaren they find themselves playing an excruciatingly painful game of catch up as the likes of Brawn GP and Red Bull Racing take charge.

What both Heidfeld and Kubica also find themselves in danger of this season is the gradual decline in praise lavished upon them if their car continues to yield nothing more than midfield results at best.

Even though both drivers can and have produced fine displays of out performance of their cars there is only so much they can do when their chassis beneath them gives them peanuts.

BMW will hopefully see this as an alarming wake up call. The idea of such a team wasting the monstrous talents they have acquired is disheartening to say the least.

Robert Kubica is a definitive championship contender and is not supposed to become a lost memory in the history books of Formula One’s prestigious talents.