“We had a brake fire”– Romain Grosjean rushes to blow out his own car fire in Detroit

Tanish Chachra | 14/06/2021
"We had a brake fire"– Romain Grosjean rushes to blow out his own car fire in Detroit

“We had a brake fire”– Romain Grosjean rises from the fire to extinguish it in the Detroit Grand Prix after a brake failure.

Romain Grosjean would not expect to battle against any fire after what had happened to him in Bahrain last year. But the Frenchman put on a brave attempt to extinguish the fire that erupted from his car during IndyCar’s Detroit Grand Prix.

Fortunately, this was a much smaller blaze, and as soon Grosjean realized the hazard, he ran back to a marshal, who handed him a fire extinguisher.

As soon as Grosjean was about to use that extinguisher to blow out the flames, the safety team arrived, and one of the members moved him away from the car, though Grosjean displayed little annoyance with that act from the safety team member.

But in the end, he had to comply with his instruction, and the situation was under control. In the end, it was Grosjean, the phoenix, who once again came out of the fire, even if it was a stunted one.

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Disappointing week in Detroit

It was a pretty tough weekend for Grosjean, who crashed out of the first race with five laps to spare and now reliability issues in the second race left him with zero points to offer to his team.

“It was a pretty eventful weekend in Detroit,” Grosjean said. “I think we had two mega qualifying results with a third and fifth. [On Saturday] We struggled a bit more with the balance. But we were hanging in there at the restart following the red flag and we were looking good.”

“I made an attacking move on Simon Pagenaud but sadly we touched, and it caused a puncture. After that, I was running at the back and I was trying to find some pace, but I was a bit optimistic, and I ended up in the wall.”

On his Sunday race performance, he added: “I got sandwiched at the race start and I lost a fair bit of positions. Then we tried to come into the race, but I picked up a drive-through penalty and we tried to come back from there.”

“Eventually we had a brake fire, and I had to extinguish a fire, but we’re all good here! I think the positive of the day is that we improved the car a lot from yesterday and we can now look forward to Road America.”

Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
Romain Grosjean

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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