Former F1 driver Romain Grosjean suffered a horrific crash at the 2020 Bahrain GP, which left the community paralyzed with fear at the time. The then-Haas driver lost control of his car in the first sector and hit the barriers, resulting in his car going up in flames. Ex-team principal of the Kannapolis-based outfit Guenther Steiner looks back on Grosjean coming out of it unharmed, as a miracle.
When the Frenchman’s car caught fire and the live feed couldn’t spot anyone moving or trying to get out, the paddock, including Steiner, feared the worst. They thought that Grosjean succumbed to the burns/injuries, although they didn’t want to believe it.
We are so thankful that Romain Grosjean was able to walk away from this. We did not need a reminder of the bravery and brilliance of our drivers, marshals, and medical teams, nor of the advances in safety in our sport, but we truly got one today#BahrainGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/z8OeTU5Nem
— Formula 1 (@F1) November 29, 2020
But after about a minute (what felt like an hour), Grosjean came out. “It is unbelievable that somebody survived that,” said Steiner to The Telegraph. “I think there must have been a little bit of magic involved there too.”
Grosjean did not suffer any injuries from the impact but suffered bad burns to both his arms. His F1 career, which was already due to end after the season finale two weeks later in Abu Dhabi, ended that evening in Sakhir.
F1 drivers didn’t like coverage of Grosjean’s crash
Visuals from Grosjean’s crash were disturbing, to say the least. For families and friends of the French driver and others on the track, it was even worse. As such, plenty of drivers condemned it.
Plus, F1’s social media channels did not waste a second in putting up videos of the crash from different angles all over the internet in the aftermath. It brought in a lot of eyeballs, with people tuning in to see what had happened.
The video F1 posted on its YouTube channel has also garnered over 18 million views. Popular F1 drivers like Lewis Hamilton and Daniel Ricciardo all insisted that gaining publicities from crashes that could have been fatal, was very disappointing.
