Robert Kubica has revealed he and Ferrari had agreed to a deal which would have seen him replace Felipe Massa from the start of the 2012 season.
This year, the Polish driver has made a comeback of sorts to Formula 1 as the third and development driver at Williams, losing out on a race seat to Sergey Sirotkin, who would ironically replace the Brazilian.
That would come in the wake of a devastating rally crash just weeks before the start of the 2011 season, when he was still with Renault, an event the 33-year-old admits would have been his last
"The biggest thing was that that rally was actually going to be my last one, as the team I was going to drive for in 2012 wouldn’t have let me rally," he told the new F1 podcast.
Asked if it was the Scuderia, Kubica confirmed it was the "red team" and added: "I don’t know if Fernando [Alonso] knew. I would have been paid less than at Renault."
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In the months and years that followed, as the one-time Grand Prix winner adjusted to life with a partially amputated right arm and other injuries, he admits the knowledge of what was to come in his F1 career became a bigger regret.
"I haven’t become a Ferrari driver, but I came so close," said Kubica.
"My recovery was so hard that for the first 18 months, this didn’t hurt because I was concentrating on my injuries and recovery. The more time passes, the more difficult this became. There were hard moments where recovery and surgeries took 100 per cent of me, but I missed F1.
"Recovery was painful but it was not made more painful by knowing I should have been in the Ferrari. It’s more painful now."
