Back from Hell: How Romain Grosjean Survived Near-Fatal F1 Fireball

It was a warm evening on the streets of Bahrain in 2020 and the stage was set for a thrilling race. A race like any other, or so everyone imagined but in just moments, this event would become one of the most unforgettable in F1 history for other reasons.

As the race began, all 20 cars, led by Lewis Hamilton, seemed to avoid any meaningful contact at Turn 1, but as the cars charged ahead, drivers fought for position through the opening lap. Approaching turn three, catastrophe struck.

Romain Grosjean’s car got touched by another, spun sharply to the right, and tore through the barriers. In a heartbeat, an explosive fireball engulfed the track, turning the calm desert night into a scene of blazing chaos. The entire paddock went numb, not believing what their eyes had witnessed.

As the red flag waved throughout the track, drivers and onlookers prayed to see a glimpse of the Haas driver, whose car was broken in two and engulfed entirely in flames. The safety and the medical reached the spot, trying to douse the flames with Grosjean nowhere to be seen. The cars were called back to the pits immediately with the session halted and the drivers re-looked at the incident on the screens, anguished with what had happened.

“They cannot lose their dad today,” Romain Grosjean

About a month after the crash, Romain Grosjean made his first appearance in front of the media where he revealed that he had admitted his faith saying,  “I’m at peace with myself and I’m going to die”, before thinking about his family and the fact he would not allow himself to be lost.

“When the car came to a stop, I opened my eyes. I undid my seatbelt straight away. The thing I didn’t remember the next day is what did I do with the steering wheel because I don’t have the memory of taking the steering wheel out.”

“And they say ‘no, the steering wheel was gone in between your legs, the column and everything broke and went down. So you don’t have to bother with the steering wheel. And then I jump out and I feel like something is touching my head, so I sit back down in the car and my first thought was ‘I’m going to wait. I’m upside down against the wall so I’m going to wait until someone comes and helps me.”

Grosjean came into the race with just two points to his name. Haas had struggled throughout the season with the team scoring only 3 points in the COVID-hit season. The Italian was on the back of a poor run of form and was set to be replaced at the start of the 2021 season.

“So I wasn’t in stress and obviously not aware at the time there was fire. Then I look right and left, and watching on the left I see fire. So I said ‘OK, well I don’t really have the time to wait here. So the next thing is that I tried to go up a bit more on the right, but it doesn’t work.” I go again on the left, it doesn’t work.”

“I sit back down and then thought about Niki Lauda, his accident [at the Nurburgring in 1976], and thought ‘it couldn’t end like this, it couldn’t be my last race, it couldn’t finish like this. No way.”

“I asked my question: ‘Is it going to burn my shoe or my foot or my hand? Is it going to be painful? Where is it going to start?’ To me, that looks like two, three, four seconds. I guess it was milliseconds at the time. And then I think about my kids and I said ‘no, they cannot lose their dad today.”

“He is not coming out…”

Mercedes’ boss Toto Wolff said, “When I saw the incident, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe that something like this could happen in modern F1”

“We all feared the worst. We were like…no he is not coming out” he added.

Then-Haas team principal, Guenther Steiner who was at the pit wall at the time of the crash, was in disbelief. He didn’t hold back on his assessment saying: “You cannot do anything, you are just a passenger to it. Once we saw the fire, we said this is it. This was bad”

D’autres images impresionantes du crash ! Un miracle tout simplement, il n’y a pas d’autres mots quand on compte le nombre de secondes passées par Romain Grosjean à l’intérieur de son habitacle et de cette fournaise 🔥#Grosjean pic.twitter.com/YeKyduV7WY

— Loïc Cognet (@loicognet) November 29, 2020

After the wait of about three long minutes, which felt like an eternity for those anxiously watching, Grosjean miraculously emerged from the fireball much like Vin Diesel in the climax of Furious 6.

The Stewarts assisted him in getting out of the car with Grosjean visibly affected by the extreme heat. Not only did he get out of the car, but he also managed to walk by himself towards the safety car bringing the life back into those left worried by the scenes.

Recalling the incident, Grosjean’s wife was unsurprisingly shaken by the incident. “Of course, I didn’t sleep that night,’  Marion Grosjean said.

“‘I don’t want to lie, the words aren’t coming easily. That will make him laugh, he who knows how much I like to talk.”

The Swiss driver was taken to Bahrain’s Defence Force Hospital for treatment where it came to light that he had somehow suffered only minor cuts and burns and avoided any fracture in his body. Much of the credit goes to the halo which was introduced in F1 a couple of years earlier. The incident also made a halo a permanent feature in the F1 car which was otherwise debated by many racers and race engineers.

 

What happened in the aftermath of the Grosjean incident?

Romain Grosjean was ruled out of the remaining two races of the COVID-hit 2020 season with Haas reserve driver Pietro Fittipaldi taking over the Swiss driver’s seat. Grosjean was set to leave the American-based outfit anyway at the end of the season and he never returned to the F1 paddock since.

Did Grosjean race again after the Bahrain GP crash?