Robert Kubica's Formula One career hung in the balance on Sunday after a high-speed crash in a minor rally in Italy left the Renault driver fighting to save the use of his right hand.
His team said the Pole, who went through seven hours of surgery involving seven doctors split into two teams to attend to multiple fractures to his right leg and arm, had been put into an induced coma.
The F1 season will start in Bahrain on March 13 but surgeon Mario Igor Rossello told reporters at the Santa Corona hospital in Pietra Ligure near Genoa that it could take a year for the 26-year-old to recover.
“We will see in the next days what will happen,” he said.
“The danger is that in five or seven days we have vascular problems. He could have surgery again to resolve the problems,” added Rossello, while also offering a glimmer of hope.
“Drivers are always very special patients. I have a lot of motorbike patients and they heal in the fastest way possible, much faster than normal people.”
Rossello said later Kubica's right forearm had been cut in two places with significant lesions to the bones and tendons.
“At the end of the operation, Robert's hand was well vascularised and warm, which is encouraging,” he added.
With testing already underway in Spain and the first race of the season in Bahrain on March 13, his Lotus-backed team will surely have to find a replacement for one of the most popular and competitive drivers on the grid.
Kubica, a race winner in Canada in 2008 with Sauber, was Renault's big hope of starting the season with a splash.
The team's official third drivers are Brazilian Bruno Senna and France's Romain Grosjean. Senna competed in 2010 for the Hispania team while Grosjean started seven races for Renault in 2009.
Neither has scored a point in F1 and media reports quickly focused on Germans Nick Heidfeld and Nico Hulkenberg as possible alternatives, although the latter is contracted to Force India as a reserve.
Renault's other race driver is Russian Vitaly Petrov, who made his debut in 2010.
The F1 paddock and world of motorsport at large was quick to send messages of support to Kubica, with other drivers using social network Twitter to express their shock and support for a fierce competitor who has already overcome considerable obstacles to reach the top on talent alone.
Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, Kubica's closest friend in the paddock as well as a regular poker partner, visited the hospital.
Kubica, Poland's first F1 driver and a national sporting hero, was driving to the start of the Ronde di Andora event near Genoa in a Skoda Fabia when the car went off the road and hit a church wall.
The car was impounded by police for checks, but a wet tar road that had tree roots sticking out was the most likely cause of the crash.
Navigator Jacub Gerber got out unhurt but Kubica had to be extracted by firemen.
Kubica, a keen rally fan who has entered several events previously, tested the new Renault in Valencia last week and ended the three days as the fastest overall.
He walked away virtually unscathed from a huge crash in Canada in 2007 but still bears the scars of a serious road accident as a passenger in 2003, which left him with titanium bolts in his arm.
The accident was sure also to raise a further debate about the wisdom of teams allowing their highly paid and prized drivers to risk everything in their recreational life.
But team principal Eric Boullier, who was due to visit Kubica on Monday with Petrov, said: “We let him do it because rallying is in his heart.
“Rally driving is vital for Robert and his state of mind...we know the risks and so does he. We don't want a robot or corporate driver.”
Red Bull driver Mark Webber was the last to suffer such an injury, breaking his leg and shoulder in November 2008 after being involved in a collision with a car while cycling in Tasmania.
In 2010, while leading the championship into the final races, Webber fell off his mountain bike again and fractured his shoulder.
In 1990 Italian GP driver and race winner Alessandro Nannini, whose Benetton team went on to become Renault, had his right forearm severed in a helicopter accident. Although he had successful surgery, he did not race again in F1. - Reuters