SAN FRANCISCO, November 29, (THEWILL) – French race driver Romain Grosjean, who suffered a horrific accident in Sunday’s race in Bahrain was fortunate to avoid more major burns after it was revealed by FIA doctor Ian Roberts that his helmet visor melted during his fiery Grand Prix crash.
The first thing Roberts said he did was tell the French driver to “sit down” and he explained why.
“He was very shaky and his visor was completely opaque and melted. I had to get his helmet off just to check everything else was okay.
“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, a bit more protection, get some gel on his burns then get him into the ambulance and off to the medical centre.”
Grosjean, whose Haas car split in two upon impact with the barriers in the crash, was engulfed in a fireball. But, the Frenchman managed to escape from the flames with minor burns.
As a result of major safety design factors around fuel tanks, horrific scenes like that are extremely rare in F1. Doctor Roberts noted that despite the heavy impact, the medical crew’s first concern was to check for the effects of the fire on the driver.
“From that sort of thing it’s going to be flame, smoke inhalation, airway issues, but nothing went up into his helmet, we’ve had a look at his helmet as well,” said Roberts, whose face was also singed in the rescue.
“As we arrived [it was a] very odd scene, where you’ve got half a car pointing in the wrong direction and just across the barrier a mass of heat. Then looking to the right at that point I could see Romain trying to get up.
“We needed some way of getting to him, we’ve got the marshal there with the extinguisher, that was just enough to push the flame away as Romain got high enough to then reach over and pull him over the barrier.
“Looking at him clinically we were quite happy with him from a life-threatening injury point of view, then it was just trying to make him comfortable from the injuries we could see.”
In his own reaction, Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo first expressed joy at Grosjean’s survival, but claimed to possessing “a lot of rage” at the graphic way the accident was broadcasted. He conceded he still felt angry at the time of speaking a few hours after the incident.
“It was just very, very poorly handled. It felt like a game and it’s not.
“We’re lucky he’s here but it could have been a different story. To show it like it’s something from Hollywood, it’s not cool. Choose to do that tomorrow, but not today.”
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
