FIREBALL MIRACLE
GROSJEAN G SURVIVES HORROR INFERNO AFTER A 137mph SMASH
This is the terrifying moment Formula One driver Romain Grosjean (circled) emerged from the fireball that engulfed his car after it crashed at 137mph. The Frenchman was taken to hospital where he was detained for treatment for burns to his hands.
IT was like a Hollywood stunt scene, too orange and too scary to be conjured other than from the wild imagination of fiction. But, striking the Bahrain Grand Prix paddock dumb in an instant, Romain Grosjean’s Haas clipped Daniil Kvyat’s AlphaTauri, hurtled off the track at 137mph, hit the barriers at 56G and bang, like a match on dynamite, it was ablaze, the flames lighting up the sky.
The TV cameras immediately cut away, never a good sign. Many feared the worst for the Frenchman, 34, whose black skid marks marked the spot he left the track on the third corner of the first lap.
When finally Grosjean was found to be alive, we saw that his car had split in two and the part in which Grosjean was sitting had penetrated the steel wall.
His ‘halo’ — the titanium and carbon device that protects a driver’s head — had bent the barrier and, seemingly, saved his life.
Yes, that is correct, the rear of the car was on the trackside; the front of it, containing Grosjean, lay the other side.
When the replays were shown, he was inside his smoking machine for some 25 seconds before, finally, he climbed out as rescuers arrived: marshals spraying fire extinguishers and the medical car zooming up from behind.
British medical delegate Dr Ian Roberts peered through the pyre for sight of Grosjean.
But as he was contemplating whether to go into the inferno, his ‘patient’ could be detected trying to climb over the barrier. Roberts put his right hand on Grosjean’s left arm to steady him as he made his leap to safety.
Alan van der Merwe, driving the medical car, sprayed foam on Grosjean and Roberts to stop the fire spreading.
Roberts takes up the story: ‘Arriving on the scene there was half the car pointing in the wrong direction and I thought where on earth is the rest? We saw a big gap in the Armco.
‘It looked like an oven. It was red with flame. There was a fire marshal rapidly on scene and that push of the extinguisher, the powder, pushed the flames back enough. Once Romain was high enough we could get him over the barrier and away.
‘But it was a very small window because as soon as the extinguisher powder went forward, the flames were coming back pretty soon afterwards.’
Grosjean, hobbling, put some distance between himself and the fireball, before being sat in the medical car and thence flown by helicopter to BDF Military Hospital, ten miles north in West Riffa, with slight burns to his hands, which were bandaged last night.
It was a miracle of deliverance that nothing more serious was wrong in what now may turn out to have been the last grand prix of his life. Haas had already announced that he is leaving at the end of the season, which has two more races to run, here on another track next Sunday and in Abu Dhabi the following weekend.
Grosjean’s injuries may prevent his taking part in either, even if he has the mental fortitude to contemplate such a trial.
Looking to the future, he was thinking of joining the
American IndyCar Series next year. That is a perilous business on oval tracks and comes with expensive life-insurance premiums.
His wife Marion is known not to be keen on such a gamble, and yesterday’s unfolding horror may well have swung the family vote in her favour. He is a father of three, with sons Sacha, 7, Simon, 5 and daughter Camille, three next month. Marion had been due here yesterday but the Covid-testing regime presented too many obstacles and she instead watched from their Genava home.
John Watson, the former driver, knows about the horrors of fires at the workplaces. For he held the charred head of Niki Lauda in his lap in the moments after the Austrian came within seconds of being burned to death at the Nurburgring in 1976.
Last night, Watson said of Grosjean: ‘Thank goodness someone up there loves him. That had death written all over it. He has had nine lives in the blink of an eye. My advice: retire. It is a wakeup call for the whole grid.’ Yes, such have been the advances in safety that it is easy to forget how perilous motor racing used to be.
The race was delayed for 90 minutes, until 18.35 local time, while the barrier was repaired with the help of a welder. Race director Michael Masi inspected the scene, scratching his head.
He will now form part of the investigation into the accident, looking at what caused the car to catch fire. F 1 managing director Ross Brawn said: ‘The fire was worrying, the barrier coming apart was worrying, but we can be happy with safety of the car. The halo saved Roma in. There was controversy in including it but there can’t be any doubt now.’
Yes, the safety pioneers won. But the truth is written in capital letters on the entry badge everyone wear s around their neck: ‘MOTORSPORT IS DANGeROuS.’