FIRE MELTED VISOR OF F1 ‘SUPERHERO’
ROMAIN GROSJEAN’S wife wrote an emotional statement on Instagram yesterday saluting her husband for scrambling out of his fireball car during the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday. The driver’s car snapped in half and went up in flames after the first-lap accident that stunned the sporting world. Wife Marion, a French TV personality who saw the drama unfold at their home in Geneva, wrote: ‘Thank you to our children, who pushed him to pull himself out of the fire.’ The pair, who married in 2012, have two boys and a girl, Sacha (7), Simon (5) and Camille (2). Marion paid tribute to the rescuers and well-wishers, adding: ‘Thank you to Romain’s courage, his determination, his strength, his love, his physical training that kept him alive. It didn’t take one miracle but several.’ The 34-year-old Frenchman — hailed as a ‘superhero’ by Marion — escaped from his burning car after piercing the safety barriers at 140mph with little more than burns to the top of both hands. Ian Roberts, the British medical delegate who was quickly on the scene, said yesterday: ‘He was very shaky and his visor was completely opaque and melted. I had to get it off just to check everything was OK. ‘He had some pain on his foot and hands so from that point we knew it was safe enough to move him into the (medical) car, get some gel on his burns then get him into the ambulance and off to the medical centre.’ Grosjean was kept in hospital for a second night but is likely to be discharged today. Pietro Fittipaldi, grandson of double world champion Emerson, will fill the drive in his place at the Sakhir Grand Prix, a second successive race in Bahrain but this time staged on a different configuration. The FIA have opened their investigation into the incident, with race director Michael Masi saying there will be ‘no knee-jerk’ safety changes in the interim.