Who’s Right, Theissen or Kubica?

There’s no question KERS is worth a lot in terms of money, but in race safety, race implementation and usefulness, and the continuous build up in development costs, is KERS really worth the effort?

Recently Robert Kubica voiced his opinion on how he feels about KERS and the possibility it may actually hinder him. Sebastian Vettel spoke up about weather it is safe or not. No one really seems to know if it is. Ferrari have broken their budget on the development of KERS and it’s race value hasn’t even been measured.

The crowd of supporters of KERS has grown smaller every day and very few seem to be left. One of those is Mario Theissen who has countered criticism of the project suggesting that not having the system up and running by March is really not acceptable considering it has been on the books for next season for quite a long time.

Theissen is quite a supporter of KERS, he always has been, but he has an outspoken driver in Robert Kubica who is never shy when his feelings and the media are concerned.

This brings me to the relationship between Mario Theissen and Robert Kubica. I have to admit of course that I’m a big fan of Mario and of Robert, but lately of Robert as a driver more than what I see off the track. It was shortly after the Canadian Grand Prix that Kubica felt he had a serious shot at winning the championship, but Theissen stuck to his BMW Sauber overall plan which meant curtailing somewhat the continuous development of the F1.08 in favor of the F1.09 and KERS. Kubica also felt that more time was spent helping Nick Heidfeld overcome his qualifying problems than helping him in his effort to win the championship.

This led to a strained relationship between Kubica and Theissen later last season and at a time when it’s the last sort of thing you need in a team. Now with Theissen in favor of KERS and Kubica seriously questioning it from his perspective, this relationship could be further strained leading into 2009.

Both Mario Theissen and Robert Kubica are fairly head strong or stubborn but very intelligent people who should be able to air their issues and not create a larger problem than what we saw last season or the value of Kubica to BMW Sauber may begin to dwindle and could we leave KERS entirely until 2010 if at all?