THE RACE OF MY LIFE

Le Mans champion Robert Kubica has seen more triumph and tragedy than any other driver working today. His greatest victory is the one you would least expect.

- BY A.J. BAIME

THE LAST LAP at Le Mans 2025. Filthy, beaten cars roared down the Mulsanne straight one final time, the leading hypercars having traveled almost three-quarters as many miles in 24 hours as a Formula 1 car will race all season. At the wheel of the No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P, Robert Kubica held a roughly 15-second lead over the No. 6 Porsche. All he had to do was finish the lap and collect the victory. An in-car camera captured the look in his eyes, through the open visor of his helmet. Even in that slim view, you could see laser focus.

"I drove the last three and a half hours," Kubica says. "It was quite a long drive, and at the end of 24 hours, you are quite exhausted. But I knew what I was doing. I was in a zone, like seeing through a tunnel."

Around the track, more than 330,000 fans stood on their feet. Millions more watched through screens. The moment the checkered flag waved, pandemonium spread—in the AF Corse pit, in pockets of the crowd where Kubica flags waved, and all over Italy and Poland. "The 83 AF Corse Ferrari wins Le Mans 2025!" a TV commentator shouted. "What a story! And what a final two hours-plus for Robert Kubica."

Few humans ever get to experience this kind of adulation: to stand on the Le Mans podium, to lift the trophy, to feel rivers of Champagne pouring over your eyes. To be the first from your country—Poland, in Kubica's case—to win the world's most important endurance race. All the discipline, thousands of hours of testing, and innumerable sacrifices led to this moment. It's as if Robert Kubica had lived his life like an arrow in flight, and this was the point where it hit the bull's-eye. For most athletes, this would be a life-defining victory. But Kubica is not most athletes. His story is much more complicated.