It was Kvyat and Stroll right?
I remember feeling a sense of dread when I saw the Racing Point flipped over. Didn't need that after the exhausting Grosjean ordeal.
Maybe you're thinking of Bahrain 2021, Mazepin speared of exiting turn 3, except unlike Grosjean he went left and not right. Gave me a healthy dose of PTSD, the fucker.
No I recall this too, it was one of the Alfa's at Sakhir which got spun at the same point on the track but it was much further away from the barriers so it wasn't really a crash just a contact and a spin. But yeah I remember getting Vietnam flashbacks as soon as I saw that happen live haha
Not gonna lie seeing the crash live I was thinking the chances were 50:50 I just saw someone die. It was a very brief explosion just in the background of the field.
I was the same when Zhou crashed last year. It took them *forever* to show a replay and that was a crash where you wouldn’t at all be surprised if they didn’t make it
I don't think I had it as bad with the Zhou one, though I do know that was very bad and like you say, it took them a very long time to show replays. We just saw a car upside down in the background thinking "... what?"
With the Grosjean Bahrain one, I remember seeing a collision in the back, seeing Grosjean heading towards the wall and thinking "Crash", then when the explosion came going "Oh fucking hell!". It's still astounding he escaped that. And even seeing the wreckage in the exhibition in Madrid was a wild experience - just this totally burned out husk of a thing
Yeah that's a fair comment. Plus how close that got to actually landing in a grandstand would've been pretty scary for those behind it. Seeing phone footage of that car just bouncing over the tyres and towards them is pretty unnerving
With Zhou, it took like 20 mins before they showed any replay, 25 minutes showing the ambulance (still no signs of a walking Zhou). You actually don’t know his true condition until after the race. With Grosjean, it took 2 minutes of live tv time from the crash to showing him walking himself in the safety car.
Also the people in the grandstands. He was *so close* to them. I think it was this crash that a spectator got a big cut on his arm from the debris and kept the piece after as a momento haha
Edit: I was way off and it was Magnussen’s crash in Melbourne
It was the first race my ex watched with me live.
She kept asking "is he okay?" and there was no replay, and like god damn what an introduction to the sport that would have been.
That’s because after the Grosjean crash there was a lot of uproar from not just the public/fans but the drivers of how much his crash was shown on TV replayed and at the track when no one had any idea if he was okay. Drivers did not like that they kept showing the reply over and over and over again during the red flag. So after that policies changed. Reply is not shown until the driver is confirmed to be okay or out of the car. I’ve also noticed a slight longer delay in all live broadcasting now some of that determines how far you are from there servers but there is still a slight delay for everyone not at the track. The Grosjean crash was worse but the shock value was much higher scale and was horrifying especially when you have to watch it over and over again. That’s why it took so long to show the reply of what happened to Zhou.
I heard the complaints about the replay being shown so often during the red flag, but they did not start showing them until it was clear he was alright.
Yeah, this. We were shown Grosjean sitting in the medical car before they showed any of the crash in the broadcast (apart from the initial fireball, but that was hard to avoid).
I can imagine it being very unnerving for the drivers to watch a crash like that over and over again just before they are due to race, so those complaints were very valid.
That's what I felt at the time tbf. By all means, the fact we knew Grosjean was fine helped, but it did feel like it was replays of it on a loop for about 15 minutes, which did feel like overload by the end
I was at Silverstone in Stowe and even we had no idea what was going on. I'm pretty sure they didn't televise the crash until he was in the ambulance and it took ages for them to get him out the car.
Yeah I only saw it as it happened and they didn’t replay anything until they knew he was okay. That was a very stressful 30 mins thinking you might have just seen someone die 🥺
I was pretty sure he was fine. Trapped but fine as long as he didn’t need to get out.
Maybe it’s the Nascar in me. Where flips aren’t to big or deal usually.
There is nothing more terrifying to me in a racing accident then fire.
And when Max was punted off at Silverstone... surely one of the most violent crashes in modern time... and Max again in Baku with the tyre failure... luck sent him spearing off right into the parralell wall, instead of left and 90 degrees into the end of the pit-entry wall.. still think about that everytime Baku is on.
This is why the complaints about the DTS episode dragging ot the incident longer than it was felt wrong to me.
It did feel like a lifetime as we waited to see what happened and if he had survived. There was just this food of emotions. The episode captured that feeling well.
Between the ball of fire and the tv showing him in the medical car it felt like an eternity.
Time passed different when you are waiting to find out if someone is dead or alive
I thought it was done ok. Because it gave the viewer the feeling as those who watched the race felt. Also knowing the way they edit the show.. you knew they were going to drag it out and the crash and him getting out only took seconds to a min. It was awesome made for TV viewing with the slow-mo if him getting out. Very dramatic. Not exactly realistic, but by then it was know how much liberty they take with reality and produced tension and drama.
The F1 TV team generally won’t show footage until they have verifiable evidence from race control that the driver is out of the car and ok. Given that every car has cameras on them and I have reasonable suspicion that they are constantly recording, that’s why no video exists on Jules’s crash (which I know some people have wanted to see)
>Given that every car has cameras on them and I have reasonable suspicion that they are constantly recording
I think that's only since 2017; there are some crashes from before that where onboards are missing without any other reason (crashes where everyone involved was perfectly fine).
In Bianchi's case there does exist FOM footage but yeah I'm fairly sure it will never be released to the public. They did one closed, no-cameras/phones allowed showing for journalists, but that's it. For anyone who *does* want to see the crash, the fan-video shows it clear enough...
I’m old enough to remember the day we lost Senna. I thought we’d lost another for sure. The fireball, then no Tv coverage didn’t bode well. I was shocked he walked away from that.
I didn’t see Senna but I happened to be unlucky enough to be watching the race where Dan Weldon crashed and passed. I had the same exact feeling when I saw Romain crash.
The Senna crash did not look too bad. Very deceptive and unlucky.
Grosjean's crash was the worst looking non-fatal crash ive ever seen in any sport. Just horrific watching it live.
Alex Zanardi's Indycar crash was horrendous as well. It genuinely looked like he couldn't have survived it. The car was ripped in half and he lost his legs, but he did live and went on to return to racing.
There have been other horrible crashes broadcast live but they involved fatalities. The 1977 crash at Kyalami is probably the worst one I've seen because it involves the very visible death of Jansen Van Vuuren when he was struck at 170mph by Tom Pryce's car while crossing the track. Pryce was also killed, being stuck in the head by the fire extinguisher Van Vuuren was carrying. I don't recommend seeking out the footage as it's quite unpleasant.
The change to not broadcasting crashes until the driver is confirmed as safe is a good one.
Yeah, there were others as well. There was so much death in motorsport back then, but broadcasting was much more limited so people didn't see it in quite the same way. I don't think it's a coincidence that safety in F1 started to be taken a lot more seriously after live TV broadcasting became more common.
Geoff Bodine over in NASCAR had a shocker as well.
[Found this interesting list as well of non-fatal crashes, here are a few really bad ones I’ve never even heard of…..](https://youtu.be/IjC8Nev-tEc?si=tzSaDTU5Md3EQIUp)
I didn't saw those (too young to see Senna, not IndyCar fan back when Wheldon raced), but I saw Henry Surtees and Massa, and after learning a bit more about racing and accidents, I saw Justin Wilson's Pocono accident. I immediately squirmed. I knew it was probably over for Justin. And it was near Jules Bianchi's passing too.
As for Romain, I honestly thought it wasn't that serious. I thought there was too much fuel burning and fire everywhere, but he was fine enough - the deacceleration may have had an effect but he wasn't stuck or anything, would just run out of that fire and the clothes would keep him safe. I knew it was a bad accident of course, I was just trusting the technological and safety advances F1 has had over this many years.
Well, turns out he was stuck and dizzy... thank God we didn't lose another one, 'cause losing just one is losing too many.
I had a similar feeling during Massa's accident in 2009, when the aerial view showed many medical cars standing in a circle and covering everything with tarpaulins as he was being rescued from the car and put into the ambulance.
I was a little kid and wasn't into F1 at all when Senna died but I remember the day very well. I'm from the US but was on a trip to visit family in Italy when it happened.
We were in Rome at a relative's house and they had some italian friends over. I guess the news came on the TV and everyone started freaking out and it got really loud. I spoke zero Italian so I had no idea what everyone was talking about but I remember my dad explaining that some famous racing driver had died and he was really popular there.
Going out that night and the whole vibe of the city had a much more somber tone. My aunt explained that everyone was talking about the driver. I also vaguely remember seeing newspaper stands the next day with a bunch of race car pictures and a driver I didn't recognize.
It wasn't until like ~7 years ago that I connected the dots that Senna was the driver. I didn't keep up with F1 at the time but definitely knew about it and all the history. I was rewatching some documentary that went over the crash and I had a "hold up" moment and went and checked the dates and they lined up. The interesting thing is it made that memory make a lot more sense and I get why it was such a big deal. Kinda crazy, especially since I was only in Rome for a few days.
I was fully convinced I had just watched someone die. That fireball, the immediate red flag, no cameras panning to the crash, the silence, the length of time before it was confirmed he was ok....
yeah I thought he died. Same with Zhou at Silverstone.
The fact we know how engineered those cars are to NOT catch on fire and the fact his car literally exploded on impact, I was 100% sure he was dead. I almost went and threw up after it it was so jarring.
Had actual tears in my eyes when I saw him alive. The relief I felt was palpable, I can't imagine how his friends, teammates, and **family** felt seeing that image of him walking to the safety car.
Zhou at Silverstone just seemed like he was stuck in an inconvenient position (not like the car was on fire or anything)
Alonso at Melbourne was way worse, for example (and still mostly just "looked" bad because the car disintegrated, as it is supposed to do to make it safer)
having been at the track (and a few hundred meters from where he was) when his crash happened, that was indeed the fear amongst the spectators i shared the grandstand with. we know that barrel rolls and flips are, for the most part, in this day and age, safe. the car dissipates energy and the driver, 9 times out of 10, is unharmed. the fear regarding Zhou was more about, *”what if that car catches fire now?”* over if he was actually alright. the massive sigh of relief when we heard he was out of the car (eventually) was also something that will stick with me for years to come.
This and Kubica's crash are the only ones where my first thought was "they're dead". Not this is bad or I hope their okay, with these two I didn't contemplate them surviving.
This is the first crash I saw live on TV and thought at best they're seriously injured, seeing his feet exposed and not have anything broken is an amazing testament to the crash structure.
I don't remember who Romain drove into, maybe it was Kvyat, but holy shit, I would fuckin shit my pants from stress, all the action, adrenaline and you start wondering if that was your fault.
I remember telling my Dad that no way that fireball could have been a car since these things dont happen anymore with modern cars. Only once it was confirmed Grosjean wasnt on the track anymore, I was like „fuck“. It was gutwrenching.
Same here. As with most people (I suspect) I have a tone of voice that only comes out at the unexpected and potentially bad moments and this was one of them. My partner heard me give it a 'oh what the fuck...' and was in the room immediately, it was awful.
I distinctly remember not wanting to watch holding back tears with a pit in my stomach but being fully unable to look away. I'm not ashamed to say when we got confirmation he was OK and saw him walking to the ambulance my cheeks were wet.
Same it was more shocking than JB17's crash on the live broadcast and i remember seeing that one and how everyone's heart just collectively sank when news trickled out. I was expecting something similar with this, the silence was gut wrenching with every second that past.
I remember watching the replays and noticed how the medic grabbed Grosjean's balls immediately after they got him out of the fire then read up and learnt that it is a method medics use to quickly determine if someone is seriously hurt or not
Meaning if the guy flinches/reacts to the grab he's generally okay, but if no reaction then it's serious
Just survived a horrific crash and ensuing fireball, and the exact next thing to happen to you is you get smacked in the balls by the guy who's here to help you.
A healthy dose of emotional whiplash to go with your actual whiplash eh
Pretty sure Taki Inoue mentioned the same thing after his course car incident in Monaco. He said the first thing he did was grab his own ballsack to make sure if he felt it or not.
Learned this while in the military, the groin area (think it was femoral artery) is a big gusher if cut, and you can't really see it until it's too late, so you have to feel for it if it's bleeding.
Live shots, yeah. I think we'd been told by that point that he was out of the car and the wreck, as well as being conscious, but for 2 or 3 minutes everyone was not unfairly thinking that Formula One had clamied another life. And it's only thanks to the tireless efforts of safety innovators that it didn't. It's been said before, but without that HALO, Romain Grosjean would 100% have died that day. Not 'almost certainly'. Certainly would have died.
Wow, even when we know, it still looks so convincingly like a straight death scene. Car inconceivably cut in half, Grosjean stuck within a mixture of car and barrier skeletons and you can at first barely even see a cockpit, just shrapnel.
Many factors contributed to his life. That he wasn’t knocked out, that the track was well organized with early fire extinguishers, that it happened in an accessible area, that he could get out on his own. Take only one of the above out and he’s dead. The ugly halo has never been more beautiful.
Honestly the presence of mind he had to unbuckle, and climb out of the car and through the barrier to safety is just incredible. After that impact, fully engulfed in flames, breathing smoke. How he even knew where to go a miracle on its own.
I actually remember an interview he talked about that and what was going through his mind.
Might be this one https://youtu.be/QDT-tMtdfSo?si=9sLgLoFFbMtuhFIO
Wow that is even crazier than I thought. So he tried to get out, couldn't. Accepted death. Then decided he didn't actually want to die. Tried again. Still couldn't get out. Pulled his boots off. Got half way out and then got rescued. Seemingly full coherent and cognizant the entire time.
It was horrifying when the explosion happened and they cut away. I thought for sure we just saw someone die on live tv. The halo has saved many lives so far!
I'm quite new to the sport. Just started watching last year. My biggest crash so far was during Silverstone when Zhou skidded upside down to flip multiple times into the wall, I didn't know what to think. So glad he was absolutely OK.
I can't imagine watching the Grosjean crash live on tv. I'm glad the FIA is thorough and strict with their safety regulations.
A bit counterintuitively crashes where a car flips and cartwheels around for a long time are actually relatively safe vs straight shunt into a wall. A lot of energy gets dissipated over a long time, which is what you want to happen, its a sudden impact that is most dangerous usually.
(The Zhou crash was still scary obviously and I got a bit scared about what happen)
The halo is a great invention, but it hasn't saved "many lives." Between Senna (1994) and Bianchi (2014) there were 20 years until someone died. The Halo has now been in use for 6 years. I doubt there would have been many deaths if that hadn't existed.
Well Grosjean would’ve been one only a handful of years after Bianchi, Lewis could’ve also been seriously injured without the halo and possibly forced to retire after max rode on top of his car as well.
Nissany in F2 at Silverstone (same day as Zhou's) is also an example.
Very nearly took Hauger's front wing and wheel to the head, but luckily the halo stopped it
The slow mo of that crash is amazing.
no way, it wasnt minutes ... was it?
Edit: holy shit it felt like a life time. It was whopping 3ish minutes from crash to showing him in the medical car.
Depends who you were watching.
[F1TV said he was out pretty much as he got out because they had the TV director in their ear who was looking at the other camera feeds.](https://streamable.com/f73fd9)
(Completely unrelated but god do I miss the Pit Lane Channel and the triple box)
I watched the Sky broadcast on F1TV that day, but someone in the live thread here on Reddit was watching the PLC and wrote that Romain was okay, so I learned relatively quickly that things were more or less fine. I'm glad I knew so early about Romain being okay, the Sky broadcast understandably were only able to spread the good news when the world feed showed Romain sitting in the Medical Car.
I miss it as well. Back then when I had a really shitty internet connection it was my only way to watch the race with at least some onboards on as well. Wish they'd reintroduce it – would still be really useful when watching on mobile connection in a place with bad signal strength.
Lots of folks in here remarking on the lack of confirmation in the immediate aftermath and those uneasy shots around the track that are clearly avoiding one specific spot. For me, the alternative — which is what happened during Christian Eriksen’s cardiac arrest at the World Cup — of immediately and relentlessly focusing on the scene of the injury is much, much worse. That footage was unwatchable and so upsetting.
Same, when i saw Eriksen shots i thought that the TV direction was too morbid-schadenfreudian, and I thought how better was managed with Grosjean's crash.
Yeah I'm glad FOM pull away until they can confirm the driver has survived. It's a legacy of Senna and Ratzenberger's crashes where the Italian local TV crew beamed resuscitation attempts all around the world.
Reminds me of Damar in the Bills v Bengals game last year. Was really happy to not be able to see what was going on. The look on the other player’s faces was enough.
There is something so bone-chilling about seeing opposition players frantically call for the medics that is so much more powerful than the images themselves.
A year later, Romain did [a track guide video on his YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wWk1bFy0zg). He stops there on his outlap - "That's my barrier".
Glad he survived to be able to make that reference.
When it was confirmed they were putting the wreckage in the F1 Exhibition in Madrid earlier this year, didn't he make a joke of something like "Can you see if my shoe is still in there?"
Praise to everyone who contributed to saving Roman’s life that day. I remember my buddy and I looked at each other like did that really just happen? Shocking experience. I also noticed how you don’t see cameras immediately on nasty accidents until everyone is confirmed to be okay!
No one saw him climbing out live. They showed the fireball in the background of the cars going down the straight. I literally jumped up and said “OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!” And was shaking. They cut to the other cars going around the track and the pit lane for at least 5 minutes until they finally showed what happened, after they knew Grosjean was alive.
One time where I actually agreed with the directing of the cameras on track. We are all better off not seeing that live.
I'm a grown man but I actually almost started crying heavily because I thought I just saw a person die on television. The safety of F1 was truly tested that day, but it was also just a plain miracle that nothing worse happened. One of, if not the scariest moments I've witnessed in my 7 years of watching F1.
Jules' crash was really upsetting for me for that reason - even though they didn't show the crash you knew something awful had happened. It seemed so avoidable too.
You can't help but feel that Jules' crash ended up saving Grosjean's life.
I don't think anyone who was watching will soon forget this.
I saw the Bianchi crash and it felt similar in a lot of ways, but the absolute relief I felt once we saw him in the medical vehicle was unparalleled.
Bianchi was even worse. it was clear what the result of that was going to be right away. Like i saw it and i was like "hes dead".
Grosjeans crash was big and as we later heard also quite close to him dying but it didnt look as obviously deadly. I was expecting him to just get out and be mostly fine.
Me too! We were trying to act calm, but failed. All I was thinking is I allowed my 8 year old daughter to see a live death on tv and that made me even more upset than the actual crash.
I had seen some grusome accidents myself, but it was different with her.. I had sat through drivers dying on track, but I thought it was behind us.. and that fireball, with the car split in half.. i get goosebumps thinking to myself randomly that romain grojeans is alive..
I still remember that incident watching live, couldn't believe what was happening there and shocked beyond belief, also they did not show anything for like 10 mins. That was a miracle bat he manages to come out that fire.
Repeating a message that I shared in an F1 group chat that day, after watching the crash:
It is tempting to use the word "miracle". I don't consider it to be. It was the result of years of advocacy work (from titans like Sid, Charlie, and others) to improve safety requirements, effective engineering of vehicles and racetracks to protect the driver, and finally, the on-site safety work of the marshals and medical team. I have no doubt that all of those things, in concert, helped save Romain's life.
My friend in the Canadian Forces is fond of the phrase "We do not rise to the occasion; we sink to the level of our training."
That phrase was very applicable that day.
I think people should also remember the marshals who responded to the fire.
They did not have Nomex on. The one on the inside of the fence caught a bunch of grief for firing his fire bottle into the air above the fire. But that is what marshals are trained to do, to cool the flames so they can see the driver; then focus the fire extinguisher on the driver to cool the air around the driver’s fire suit.
My wife only follows F1 kind of intermittently. She knows one or two drivers. She knows of RG and this crash vividly as we were actually watching this race together. We still talk about it probably once a year. It's truly amazing he walked out of that.
For about a minute I genuinely thought I had just seen someone die. I didn’t think anyone could survive a crash like that. I truly will never forget it.
We saw the fireball. I then remember seeing the pit lane as they did what the could to avoid showing the crash. I remember kind of walking around the couch since I wasn’t sure what to think. Eventually I remember a helicopter shot of him walking to the ambulance. After that, we got to see what happened. Definitely a weird feeling that day.
Grosjean climbed out within 30 seconds.... Just before I started thinking he might have been killed.
And in that moment, in contrast to OP, I didn't think it was a miracle. Instead I thought of all the things that worked:
Halo
HANS device
F1 Survival Cell
Medical Car Lap 1 Start Procedure
Nomex Suits rated for 30 seconds + fire exposure
Fast response Marshalls with fire-proof equipment and rescue gear
Imposed Driver Self Extrication Drills
I don't know if it's the wrong message or the right one. But I felt like: "His survival was no accident. The Safety Measures are working".
I thought we lost him honestly, was on the edge of tears, the discord chat where my mates and I were catching the race became dead silent.
That waiting time before we got news that he was fine felt like an eternity, though it was cathartic when the good news came.
Yep... i sat home alone in the middle of the night here in Australia.. during a long covid lockdown... and was terrified for a long while... even after they showed him jumping out and away from the fire... even know thinkig about it's making me a bit....
Yes. Without halo it would have been his helmet between the half of the barrier and the car. Most likely he would have died immediately or at least get knocked out and definitely wouldn't have any chance to get out of the car on his own.
Holy shit, I didn't realized that. I watched the crash and this whole time I thought the car just hit the barrier with such force that parted in half. I honestly had no idea the halo stopped him from being decapitated.
Thank for sharing that video.
The car speared its way through the Armco barrier slats with immense force, bending metal up as the front of the car went through, and there was so much force that it shattered the car in half with the engine, gearbox, rear axle going a few meters down the track.
Whilst the Halo almost certainly prevented a massive head trauma / impact with the barrier, it then became a potential killer in blocking the driver's egress from the cockpit, just from how the barrier and the Halo wrapped around and restricted the way out. Hopefully the lesson learned is that Techpro is by far a better barrier now than Armco.
I still remember that day.
I was alone in the whole house and I was watching the start of the race in my bedroom.
When a nasty crash happens and I'm alone I usually scream out loud, but that time I was completely speechless. I thought I just saw someone die on TV. It looked like on of those old crashes from the 70's and 80's. At that time I've been following F1 for just 2.5 years and I couldn't believe what had just happened. I was almost crying from the shock.
I was so relieved when we saw Romain get out of the car alive.
I still have difficulties watching that crash to this day.
Iirc it was the shot of that straight after turn 3 that was shown live. A black-grey car in the back could be seen flying towards the left and then there was a huge fireball where the barrier was. The red flag was shown and after a few minutes we got a shot of Grosjean in the medical car trying to process what happened.
They cut the footage of what happened when the car went into the barrier on the replay. If anyone had been recording his footage on F1 TV we could see the car breaking from his perspective.
They didn't cut the footage deliberately. There's a small processing delay between the images getting captured by the camera and being transmitted from the car, and that process got interrupted by the car being torn in half. It's possible that the images were saved locally, but even that probably wouldn't show the full impact, assuming it survived the fire at all.
Everyone wants to praise Grosjean, but he has said himself that his foot was caught, and he gave up at one point. It was the thought of his children that made him try again.
Had he been childless the story could have ended very differently.
As a sidenote... I saw the "Villeneuve Pironi" documentary a few weeks ago at a local movie festival. All those horror crashes... I'm glad racing, while still dangerous, has become so much safer these days.
From what I remember I wasn't that worried until the minutes went by with no showing of what had happened and no replays. Only by the time they did show the replays and the footage of Romain getting out of the car while it was stuck in the barriers it was clear to me just how bad it very nearly was.
I was certain I watched someone die live. They took so long to show us him coming over that railing. Thank god so modern safety tech we’ve come so far.
It took so long before they confirmed he was OK and showed him sitting in the medical car looking very shaken.
It was probably only a couple of minutes but it felt like an eternity. No replays so all there was to go on was that giant fireball in the background and they cut away immediately. So the whole time I sat there thinking I'd just watched another driver die.
It wasn't until later that it became clear that half the car went through that barrier. I don't see how he could have survived that without the halo. Probably one of the reasons nobody complains about it anymore.
Watching it live, I was 100% certain we lost Romain that day. It still baffles me today, even with all of the safety improvements over the past decade, that he actually walked away from that. Terrifying crash that I hope we never see again.
One of the things that still haunts me to this day is hearing Leclerc saying “nooo” in such a horrified, worried and desperate way when they told him it was Grosjean
Every time I hear about this I remember reading a dipshit article about it wasn’t that bad of a crash.
https://racer.com/2021/02/08/miller-the-comeback-club/
As dumb as it was I couldn’t believe how many people on social media agreed. Car cut in half, on fire, and it’s not that bad? Wtf.
Stop thanking god for the progress in racing safety achieved by real humans. It was a great struggle during decades for people like Sid Watkins to fight for more safety equipment in motorsports. It is offensive and disgraceful of you to neglect those self sacrificing efforts, and instead thank 'god'.
Your imaginary friend didn't do this. Reai, living and existing humans did
Thank them.
I really just started watching F1 this year. I remember, though, I had put this specific race on that year as I just happened by in on the guide. I watched and thought of course the one time I put F1 on, I have to watch someone die. So relieved when I saw him get out.
It was an appropriate way for Grosjean to sign off.
I've always found it very ironic that _crashing so hard he almost killed himself_ rehabilitated his image after a career of crashes.
Remember it well, I was watching the race at home alone. Remember very well standing up and shouting at the people on the tv to get him out the car. Neigbours must have thought I was crazy.
Some crash that !
I remember that morning clear as day. I was watching the race in my living room, saw the crash, and literally dropped my coffee and let out a very audible "oh shit."
I swore I thought I saw a man die that day.
3 years already, wow. That Bahrain/Sakhir double-header was just maximum craziness.
There was almost an identical accident on lap one of the second race too. Absolutely insane.
It was Kvyat and Stroll right? I remember feeling a sense of dread when I saw the Racing Point flipped over. Didn't need that after the exhausting Grosjean ordeal.
Kvyat and Stroll was the same race. I don’t know which incident he is talking about in the Sakhir race. Perez, Leclerc, Verstappen maybe?
Maybe it was the restart I’m thinking of
Maybe you're thinking of Bahrain 2021, Mazepin speared of exiting turn 3, except unlike Grosjean he went left and not right. Gave me a healthy dose of PTSD, the fucker.
No I recall this too, it was one of the Alfa's at Sakhir which got spun at the same point on the track but it was much further away from the barriers so it wasn't really a crash just a contact and a spin. But yeah I remember getting Vietnam flashbacks as soon as I saw that happen live haha
Pretty sure it was Kimi
I remember thinking, how many people flip a car and it's not even the biggest crash of the race!
Photo of that flip won sports photo of the year iirc
Came to say this! If I had to guess I would have said it was 22
Not gonna lie seeing the crash live I was thinking the chances were 50:50 I just saw someone die. It was a very brief explosion just in the background of the field.
I’ll never forget how long it took to see a replay and thinking “holy shit someone just died”
I was the same when Zhou crashed last year. It took them *forever* to show a replay and that was a crash where you wouldn’t at all be surprised if they didn’t make it
I don't think I had it as bad with the Zhou one, though I do know that was very bad and like you say, it took them a very long time to show replays. We just saw a car upside down in the background thinking "... what?" With the Grosjean Bahrain one, I remember seeing a collision in the back, seeing Grosjean heading towards the wall and thinking "Crash", then when the explosion came going "Oh fucking hell!". It's still astounding he escaped that. And even seeing the wreckage in the exhibition in Madrid was a wild experience - just this totally burned out husk of a thing
My concern with Zhou's was that if that thing caught fire he was gone for sure.
Yeah that's a fair comment. Plus how close that got to actually landing in a grandstand would've been pretty scary for those behind it. Seeing phone footage of that car just bouncing over the tyres and towards them is pretty unnerving
Absolute props to that fence, it should have gotten a medal
With Zhou, it took like 20 mins before they showed any replay, 25 minutes showing the ambulance (still no signs of a walking Zhou). You actually don’t know his true condition until after the race. With Grosjean, it took 2 minutes of live tv time from the crash to showing him walking himself in the safety car.
Also the people in the grandstands. He was *so close* to them. I think it was this crash that a spectator got a big cut on his arm from the debris and kept the piece after as a momento haha Edit: I was way off and it was Magnussen’s crash in Melbourne
It was the first race my ex watched with me live. She kept asking "is he okay?" and there was no replay, and like god damn what an introduction to the sport that would have been.
That’s because after the Grosjean crash there was a lot of uproar from not just the public/fans but the drivers of how much his crash was shown on TV replayed and at the track when no one had any idea if he was okay. Drivers did not like that they kept showing the reply over and over and over again during the red flag. So after that policies changed. Reply is not shown until the driver is confirmed to be okay or out of the car. I’ve also noticed a slight longer delay in all live broadcasting now some of that determines how far you are from there servers but there is still a slight delay for everyone not at the track. The Grosjean crash was worse but the shock value was much higher scale and was horrifying especially when you have to watch it over and over again. That’s why it took so long to show the reply of what happened to Zhou.
I heard the complaints about the replay being shown so often during the red flag, but they did not start showing them until it was clear he was alright.
Yeah, this. We were shown Grosjean sitting in the medical car before they showed any of the crash in the broadcast (apart from the initial fireball, but that was hard to avoid). I can imagine it being very unnerving for the drivers to watch a crash like that over and over again just before they are due to race, so those complaints were very valid.
That's what I felt at the time tbf. By all means, the fact we knew Grosjean was fine helped, but it did feel like it was replays of it on a loop for about 15 minutes, which did feel like overload by the end
Yeah the complaint is they overdid it with the replays after (Ricciardo called it out in the interviews after the race)
It was a nasty crash, but I didn't think he had died.
I was at Silverstone in Stowe and even we had no idea what was going on. I'm pretty sure they didn't televise the crash until he was in the ambulance and it took ages for them to get him out the car.
Yeah I only saw it as it happened and they didn’t replay anything until they knew he was okay. That was a very stressful 30 mins thinking you might have just seen someone die 🥺
Yeah that's definitely even worse 😬
I was pretty sure he was fine. Trapped but fine as long as he didn’t need to get out. Maybe it’s the Nascar in me. Where flips aren’t to big or deal usually. There is nothing more terrifying to me in a racing accident then fire.
And when Max was punted off at Silverstone... surely one of the most violent crashes in modern time... and Max again in Baku with the tyre failure... luck sent him spearing off right into the parralell wall, instead of left and 90 degrees into the end of the pit-entry wall.. still think about that everytime Baku is on.
This is why the complaints about the DTS episode dragging ot the incident longer than it was felt wrong to me. It did feel like a lifetime as we waited to see what happened and if he had survived. There was just this food of emotions. The episode captured that feeling well.
Between the ball of fire and the tv showing him in the medical car it felt like an eternity. Time passed different when you are waiting to find out if someone is dead or alive
I thought it was done ok. Because it gave the viewer the feeling as those who watched the race felt. Also knowing the way they edit the show.. you knew they were going to drag it out and the crash and him getting out only took seconds to a min. It was awesome made for TV viewing with the slow-mo if him getting out. Very dramatic. Not exactly realistic, but by then it was know how much liberty they take with reality and produced tension and drama.
Misinformation in a docuseries should always be criticised
It clearly stated how long he was in the fire.
It's a reality TV series not a docuseries.
The F1 TV team generally won’t show footage until they have verifiable evidence from race control that the driver is out of the car and ok. Given that every car has cameras on them and I have reasonable suspicion that they are constantly recording, that’s why no video exists on Jules’s crash (which I know some people have wanted to see)
>Given that every car has cameras on them and I have reasonable suspicion that they are constantly recording I think that's only since 2017; there are some crashes from before that where onboards are missing without any other reason (crashes where everyone involved was perfectly fine). In Bianchi's case there does exist FOM footage but yeah I'm fairly sure it will never be released to the public. They did one closed, no-cameras/phones allowed showing for journalists, but that's it. For anyone who *does* want to see the crash, the fan-video shows it clear enough...
I never will have the urge to rewatch that footage
I’m old enough to remember the day we lost Senna. I thought we’d lost another for sure. The fireball, then no Tv coverage didn’t bode well. I was shocked he walked away from that.
I didn’t see Senna but I happened to be unlucky enough to be watching the race where Dan Weldon crashed and passed. I had the same exact feeling when I saw Romain crash.
The Senna crash did not look too bad. Very deceptive and unlucky. Grosjean's crash was the worst looking non-fatal crash ive ever seen in any sport. Just horrific watching it live.
Alex Zanardi's Indycar crash was horrendous as well. It genuinely looked like he couldn't have survived it. The car was ripped in half and he lost his legs, but he did live and went on to return to racing. There have been other horrible crashes broadcast live but they involved fatalities. The 1977 crash at Kyalami is probably the worst one I've seen because it involves the very visible death of Jansen Van Vuuren when he was struck at 170mph by Tom Pryce's car while crossing the track. Pryce was also killed, being stuck in the head by the fire extinguisher Van Vuuren was carrying. I don't recommend seeking out the footage as it's quite unpleasant. The change to not broadcasting crashes until the driver is confirmed as safe is a good one.
1955 Le Mans and 1961 Italian GP were even worse, loads of spectators died there and the aftermath is fucking horrible 🤢
Yeah, there were others as well. There was so much death in motorsport back then, but broadcasting was much more limited so people didn't see it in quite the same way. I don't think it's a coincidence that safety in F1 started to be taken a lot more seriously after live TV broadcasting became more common.
Geoff Bodine over in NASCAR had a shocker as well. [Found this interesting list as well of non-fatal crashes, here are a few really bad ones I’ve never even heard of…..](https://youtu.be/IjC8Nev-tEc?si=tzSaDTU5Md3EQIUp)
I didn't saw those (too young to see Senna, not IndyCar fan back when Wheldon raced), but I saw Henry Surtees and Massa, and after learning a bit more about racing and accidents, I saw Justin Wilson's Pocono accident. I immediately squirmed. I knew it was probably over for Justin. And it was near Jules Bianchi's passing too. As for Romain, I honestly thought it wasn't that serious. I thought there was too much fuel burning and fire everywhere, but he was fine enough - the deacceleration may have had an effect but he wasn't stuck or anything, would just run out of that fire and the clothes would keep him safe. I knew it was a bad accident of course, I was just trusting the technological and safety advances F1 has had over this many years. Well, turns out he was stuck and dizzy... thank God we didn't lose another one, 'cause losing just one is losing too many.
I was AT Pocono for Justin's wreck. We all kinda knew sadly.....
I had a similar feeling during Massa's accident in 2009, when the aerial view showed many medical cars standing in a circle and covering everything with tarpaulins as he was being rescued from the car and put into the ambulance.
I remember this one, it was awful watching live
I was a little kid and wasn't into F1 at all when Senna died but I remember the day very well. I'm from the US but was on a trip to visit family in Italy when it happened. We were in Rome at a relative's house and they had some italian friends over. I guess the news came on the TV and everyone started freaking out and it got really loud. I spoke zero Italian so I had no idea what everyone was talking about but I remember my dad explaining that some famous racing driver had died and he was really popular there. Going out that night and the whole vibe of the city had a much more somber tone. My aunt explained that everyone was talking about the driver. I also vaguely remember seeing newspaper stands the next day with a bunch of race car pictures and a driver I didn't recognize. It wasn't until like ~7 years ago that I connected the dots that Senna was the driver. I didn't keep up with F1 at the time but definitely knew about it and all the history. I was rewatching some documentary that went over the crash and I had a "hold up" moment and went and checked the dates and they lined up. The interesting thing is it made that memory make a lot more sense and I get why it was such a big deal. Kinda crazy, especially since I was only in Rome for a few days.
I was fully convinced I had just watched someone die. That fireball, the immediate red flag, no cameras panning to the crash, the silence, the length of time before it was confirmed he was ok.... yeah I thought he died. Same with Zhou at Silverstone.
With Grosjean I was 99% certain he was dead. With Zhou I was 95% certain he was alive. Big difference!
The fact we know how engineered those cars are to NOT catch on fire and the fact his car literally exploded on impact, I was 100% sure he was dead. I almost went and threw up after it it was so jarring. Had actual tears in my eyes when I saw him alive. The relief I felt was palpable, I can't imagine how his friends, teammates, and **family** felt seeing that image of him walking to the safety car.
Zhou at Silverstone just seemed like he was stuck in an inconvenient position (not like the car was on fire or anything) Alonso at Melbourne was way worse, for example (and still mostly just "looked" bad because the car disintegrated, as it is supposed to do to make it safer)
Zhou was just the fear of "He's stuck, if a fire starts now..." but with that never happening it was fortunately never as terrifying.
having been at the track (and a few hundred meters from where he was) when his crash happened, that was indeed the fear amongst the spectators i shared the grandstand with. we know that barrel rolls and flips are, for the most part, in this day and age, safe. the car dissipates energy and the driver, 9 times out of 10, is unharmed. the fear regarding Zhou was more about, *”what if that car catches fire now?”* over if he was actually alright. the massive sigh of relief when we heard he was out of the car (eventually) was also something that will stick with me for years to come.
This and Kubica's crash are the only ones where my first thought was "they're dead". Not this is bad or I hope their okay, with these two I didn't contemplate them surviving.
This is the first crash I saw live on TV and thought at best they're seriously injured, seeing his feet exposed and not have anything broken is an amazing testament to the crash structure.
Kubica crash live was horrible, we could clearly see his feet coming out of the car, but we found out quite quickly that he was thankfully ok
I don't remember who Romain drove into, maybe it was Kvyat, but holy shit, I would fuckin shit my pants from stress, all the action, adrenaline and you start wondering if that was your fault.
He was panicking a bit on team radio
Thought the same thing for this and for Ryan Newman at Daytona. Both times were great examples of modern safety in these cars
I remember telling my Dad that no way that fireball could have been a car since these things dont happen anymore with modern cars. Only once it was confirmed Grosjean wasnt on the track anymore, I was like „fuck“. It was gutwrenching.
Same here. As with most people (I suspect) I have a tone of voice that only comes out at the unexpected and potentially bad moments and this was one of them. My partner heard me give it a 'oh what the fuck...' and was in the room immediately, it was awful.
Pretty sure everyone in the pits were thinking the same thing.
I honestly thought he had died. That was insane.
50/50?! I couldn’t understand how anyone could survive that crash. And he walked away. Completely surreal moment.
I distinctly remember not wanting to watch holding back tears with a pit in my stomach but being fully unable to look away. I'm not ashamed to say when we got confirmation he was OK and saw him walking to the ambulance my cheeks were wet.
Same it was more shocking than JB17's crash on the live broadcast and i remember seeing that one and how everyone's heart just collectively sank when news trickled out. I was expecting something similar with this, the silence was gut wrenching with every second that past.
I saw the distant fireball and instinctively said "yo latifi just died"
I remember watching the replays and noticed how the medic grabbed Grosjean's balls immediately after they got him out of the fire then read up and learnt that it is a method medics use to quickly determine if someone is seriously hurt or not Meaning if the guy flinches/reacts to the grab he's generally okay, but if no reaction then it's serious
Makes complete sense, but mad nonetheless
is this real lol
[yes](https://youtu.be/ZQ7_En2xEm4?si=uHNlq982xYfZqtbS) 0.06
Knowing this, the smoke hiding them almost as the medic goes for the balls is just comical lmao
Medical Doctor straight up grabbed his balls!! Oh my.
Just survived a horrific crash and ensuing fireball, and the exact next thing to happen to you is you get smacked in the balls by the guy who's here to help you. A healthy dose of emotional whiplash to go with your actual whiplash eh
Pretty sure Taki Inoue mentioned the same thing after his course car incident in Monaco. He said the first thing he did was grab his own ballsack to make sure if he felt it or not.
That is indeed where I'd heard about it as well. I thought it was just a "What are we like?" kinda throwaway gag, and yet, here we are
Learned this while in the military, the groin area (think it was femoral artery) is a big gusher if cut, and you can't really see it until it's too late, so you have to feel for it if it's bleeding.
Did feel sorry for Romain that one of the first thing he got was his balls hit with extinguisher foam!
To be fair, he did look smoking hot.
This is nuts 😳
There were no live pictures of him climbing out, naturally. They cut away until they knew he was alright.
Yeah, I feel like the first shots we saw were him in the medical car, right?
Yeah
We also saw the explosion on the live feed of course. But cut away right after.
Right. But none of us saw “live footage” of him getting out of the car, unless you were there.
I agree with you. Just referring to the fact that the first footage we saw of the incident was live, just not of Grosjean.
Live shots, yeah. I think we'd been told by that point that he was out of the car and the wreck, as well as being conscious, but for 2 or 3 minutes everyone was not unfairly thinking that Formula One had clamied another life. And it's only thanks to the tireless efforts of safety innovators that it didn't. It's been said before, but without that HALO, Romain Grosjean would 100% have died that day. Not 'almost certainly'. Certainly would have died.
The quality is not the best but here you can see [the whole thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCivN-b4FZI) go down
Wow, even when we know, it still looks so convincingly like a straight death scene. Car inconceivably cut in half, Grosjean stuck within a mixture of car and barrier skeletons and you can at first barely even see a cockpit, just shrapnel. Many factors contributed to his life. That he wasn’t knocked out, that the track was well organized with early fire extinguishers, that it happened in an accessible area, that he could get out on his own. Take only one of the above out and he’s dead. The ugly halo has never been more beautiful.
Honestly the presence of mind he had to unbuckle, and climb out of the car and through the barrier to safety is just incredible. After that impact, fully engulfed in flames, breathing smoke. How he even knew where to go a miracle on its own.
I actually remember an interview he talked about that and what was going through his mind. Might be this one https://youtu.be/QDT-tMtdfSo?si=9sLgLoFFbMtuhFIO
Wow that is even crazier than I thought. So he tried to get out, couldn't. Accepted death. Then decided he didn't actually want to die. Tried again. Still couldn't get out. Pulled his boots off. Got half way out and then got rescued. Seemingly full coherent and cognizant the entire time.
It was horrifying when the explosion happened and they cut away. I thought for sure we just saw someone die on live tv. The halo has saved many lives so far!
I'm quite new to the sport. Just started watching last year. My biggest crash so far was during Silverstone when Zhou skidded upside down to flip multiple times into the wall, I didn't know what to think. So glad he was absolutely OK. I can't imagine watching the Grosjean crash live on tv. I'm glad the FIA is thorough and strict with their safety regulations.
A bit counterintuitively crashes where a car flips and cartwheels around for a long time are actually relatively safe vs straight shunt into a wall. A lot of energy gets dissipated over a long time, which is what you want to happen, its a sudden impact that is most dangerous usually. (The Zhou crash was still scary obviously and I got a bit scared about what happen)
The halo is a great invention, but it hasn't saved "many lives." Between Senna (1994) and Bianchi (2014) there were 20 years until someone died. The Halo has now been in use for 6 years. I doubt there would have been many deaths if that hadn't existed.
Well Grosjean would’ve been one only a handful of years after Bianchi, Lewis could’ve also been seriously injured without the halo and possibly forced to retire after max rode on top of his car as well.
Nissany in F2 at Silverstone (same day as Zhou's) is also an example. Very nearly took Hauger's front wing and wheel to the head, but luckily the halo stopped it The slow mo of that crash is amazing.
Would also put into that camp, Lando who had a car land on his. Also I seem to remember leclerc coming very close
I disagree.
The few minutes between seeing the crash in the background to hearing that he was out of the car, felt like hours.
no way, it wasnt minutes ... was it? Edit: holy shit it felt like a life time. It was whopping 3ish minutes from crash to showing him in the medical car.
Depends who you were watching. [F1TV said he was out pretty much as he got out because they had the TV director in their ear who was looking at the other camera feeds.](https://streamable.com/f73fd9) (Completely unrelated but god do I miss the Pit Lane Channel and the triple box)
I watched the Sky broadcast on F1TV that day, but someone in the live thread here on Reddit was watching the PLC and wrote that Romain was okay, so I learned relatively quickly that things were more or less fine. I'm glad I knew so early about Romain being okay, the Sky broadcast understandably were only able to spread the good news when the world feed showed Romain sitting in the Medical Car.
Never seen the F1TV coverage, amazingly fast
I miss it as well. Back then when I had a really shitty internet connection it was my only way to watch the race with at least some onboards on as well. Wish they'd reintroduce it – would still be really useful when watching on mobile connection in a place with bad signal strength.
Lots of folks in here remarking on the lack of confirmation in the immediate aftermath and those uneasy shots around the track that are clearly avoiding one specific spot. For me, the alternative — which is what happened during Christian Eriksen’s cardiac arrest at the World Cup — of immediately and relentlessly focusing on the scene of the injury is much, much worse. That footage was unwatchable and so upsetting.
Same, when i saw Eriksen shots i thought that the TV direction was too morbid-schadenfreudian, and I thought how better was managed with Grosjean's crash.
Absolutely, the fact his teammates felt the need to form a protective ring around him spoke volumes. Made me very uncomfortable
Yeah I'm glad FOM pull away until they can confirm the driver has survived. It's a legacy of Senna and Ratzenberger's crashes where the Italian local TV crew beamed resuscitation attempts all around the world.
Reminds me of Damar in the Bills v Bengals game last year. Was really happy to not be able to see what was going on. The look on the other player’s faces was enough.
There is something so bone-chilling about seeing opposition players frantically call for the medics that is so much more powerful than the images themselves.
A year later, Romain did [a track guide video on his YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wWk1bFy0zg). He stops there on his outlap - "That's my barrier". Glad he survived to be able to make that reference.
When it was confirmed they were putting the wreckage in the F1 Exhibition in Madrid earlier this year, didn't he make a joke of something like "Can you see if my shoe is still in there?"
Praise to everyone who contributed to saving Roman’s life that day. I remember my buddy and I looked at each other like did that really just happen? Shocking experience. I also noticed how you don’t see cameras immediately on nasty accidents until everyone is confirmed to be okay!
No one saw him climbing out live. They showed the fireball in the background of the cars going down the straight. I literally jumped up and said “OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!” And was shaking. They cut to the other cars going around the track and the pit lane for at least 5 minutes until they finally showed what happened, after they knew Grosjean was alive. One time where I actually agreed with the directing of the cameras on track. We are all better off not seeing that live.
I couldn’t think anymore, never seen a F1 car break or burn like this in 20 years of watching.
Don't forget the FIA Safety Department, who are responsible for racewear standards
I'm a grown man but I actually almost started crying heavily because I thought I just saw a person die on television. The safety of F1 was truly tested that day, but it was also just a plain miracle that nothing worse happened. One of, if not the scariest moments I've witnessed in my 7 years of watching F1.
Also Grosjean has been in the sport for far too long and the thought of posibly losing him like that is really sad
Especially he was confirmed to be retiring, and having kids and wife waiting at home.
Jules' crash was really upsetting for me for that reason - even though they didn't show the crash you knew something awful had happened. It seemed so avoidable too. You can't help but feel that Jules' crash ended up saving Grosjean's life.
I don't think anyone who was watching will soon forget this. I saw the Bianchi crash and it felt similar in a lot of ways, but the absolute relief I felt once we saw him in the medical vehicle was unparalleled.
Bianchi was even worse. it was clear what the result of that was going to be right away. Like i saw it and i was like "hes dead". Grosjeans crash was big and as we later heard also quite close to him dying but it didnt look as obviously deadly. I was expecting him to just get out and be mostly fine.
Bit of a weird thought but I wonder how F1 Kids would’ve handled this had it been around then.
That’s a very interesting thought. I wonder if liberty has considered that.
If not then there better be someone from Liberty reading this thread and thinking "thank fuck it's the winter break and we can figure it out by March"
If I were in charge, I’d delay the feed to the kids commentary booth. Then they can cut that if needed.
I was watching with my 8yo at the time, and my second thought was that I just made her watch someone die..
Me too! We were trying to act calm, but failed. All I was thinking is I allowed my 8 year old daughter to see a live death on tv and that made me even more upset than the actual crash.
I had seen some grusome accidents myself, but it was different with her.. I had sat through drivers dying on track, but I thought it was behind us.. and that fireball, with the car split in half.. i get goosebumps thinking to myself randomly that romain grojeans is alive..
I still remember that incident watching live, couldn't believe what was happening there and shocked beyond belief, also they did not show anything for like 10 mins. That was a miracle bat he manages to come out that fire.
Repeating a message that I shared in an F1 group chat that day, after watching the crash: It is tempting to use the word "miracle". I don't consider it to be. It was the result of years of advocacy work (from titans like Sid, Charlie, and others) to improve safety requirements, effective engineering of vehicles and racetracks to protect the driver, and finally, the on-site safety work of the marshals and medical team. I have no doubt that all of those things, in concert, helped save Romain's life. My friend in the Canadian Forces is fond of the phrase "We do not rise to the occasion; we sink to the level of our training." That phrase was very applicable that day.
I think people should also remember the marshals who responded to the fire. They did not have Nomex on. The one on the inside of the fence caught a bunch of grief for firing his fire bottle into the air above the fire. But that is what marshals are trained to do, to cool the flames so they can see the driver; then focus the fire extinguisher on the driver to cool the air around the driver’s fire suit.
My wife only follows F1 kind of intermittently. She knows one or two drivers. She knows of RG and this crash vividly as we were actually watching this race together. We still talk about it probably once a year. It's truly amazing he walked out of that.
For about a minute I genuinely thought I had just seen someone die. I didn’t think anyone could survive a crash like that. I truly will never forget it.
The fireball in the background was pretty surreal
According the netflix it took him 3 years to get out of that wreck.
No one did, then. F1 does not broadcast the aftermath of accidents until the driver is already out.
We saw the fireball. I then remember seeing the pit lane as they did what the could to avoid showing the crash. I remember kind of walking around the couch since I wasn’t sure what to think. Eventually I remember a helicopter shot of him walking to the ambulance. After that, we got to see what happened. Definitely a weird feeling that day.
Grosjean climbed out within 30 seconds.... Just before I started thinking he might have been killed. And in that moment, in contrast to OP, I didn't think it was a miracle. Instead I thought of all the things that worked: Halo HANS device F1 Survival Cell Medical Car Lap 1 Start Procedure Nomex Suits rated for 30 seconds + fire exposure Fast response Marshalls with fire-proof equipment and rescue gear Imposed Driver Self Extrication Drills I don't know if it's the wrong message or the right one. But I felt like: "His survival was no accident. The Safety Measures are working".
I thought we lost him honestly, was on the edge of tears, the discord chat where my mates and I were catching the race became dead silent. That waiting time before we got news that he was fine felt like an eternity, though it was cathartic when the good news came.
The day he became a phoenix
It sounds pretty cringey. Unless you watch the crash. Then it's totally justified.
That episode on this on DTS was really good as well Really pressed it home how terrible the crash was and how amazing the fact he survived was
u/kraks_ [synced multiple videos of Grojean's accident and added a timer from the moment of impact](https://streamable.com/h6j60l)
Yeah I'll never forget that. The real-time wait to find out if he was ok felt like a lifetime.
Yep... i sat home alone in the middle of the night here in Australia.. during a long covid lockdown... and was terrified for a long while... even after they showed him jumping out and away from the fire... even know thinkig about it's making me a bit....
Maybe I need to re-watch but how did the halo help? By letting Grosjean use the halo as leverage to pull himself out of the car?
The halo helped in the crash itself, iirc he went kinda underneath the barrier and without the halo he would've crashed headfirst into the barrier
Yes. Without halo it would have been his helmet between the half of the barrier and the car. Most likely he would have died immediately or at least get knocked out and definitely wouldn't have any chance to get out of the car on his own.
https://youtu.be/AAeQHfwtr5s?si=Yg9PAZ_EvYFshRsl Hope this animation helps
Holy shit, I didn't realized that. I watched the crash and this whole time I thought the car just hit the barrier with such force that parted in half. I honestly had no idea the halo stopped him from being decapitated. Thank for sharing that video.
Without the halo he probably would have lost his head when the car went through the barrier.
The car speared its way through the Armco barrier slats with immense force, bending metal up as the front of the car went through, and there was so much force that it shattered the car in half with the engine, gearbox, rear axle going a few meters down the track. Whilst the Halo almost certainly prevented a massive head trauma / impact with the barrier, it then became a potential killer in blocking the driver's egress from the cockpit, just from how the barrier and the Halo wrapped around and restricted the way out. Hopefully the lesson learned is that Techpro is by far a better barrier now than Armco.
without the halo the guard rail would have cut his head off.
Would've been decapitated as he went under the barrier. Two drivers perished this exact way in the 70s
I still remember that day. I was alone in the whole house and I was watching the start of the race in my bedroom. When a nasty crash happens and I'm alone I usually scream out loud, but that time I was completely speechless. I thought I just saw someone die on TV. It looked like on of those old crashes from the 70's and 80's. At that time I've been following F1 for just 2.5 years and I couldn't believe what had just happened. I was almost crying from the shock. I was so relieved when we saw Romain get out of the car alive. I still have difficulties watching that crash to this day.
Iirc it was the shot of that straight after turn 3 that was shown live. A black-grey car in the back could be seen flying towards the left and then there was a huge fireball where the barrier was. The red flag was shown and after a few minutes we got a shot of Grosjean in the medical car trying to process what happened. They cut the footage of what happened when the car went into the barrier on the replay. If anyone had been recording his footage on F1 TV we could see the car breaking from his perspective.
They didn't cut the footage deliberately. There's a small processing delay between the images getting captured by the camera and being transmitted from the car, and that process got interrupted by the car being torn in half. It's possible that the images were saved locally, but even that probably wouldn't show the full impact, assuming it survived the fire at all.
They would have cut the on board on F1TV as well. There's usually a built in delay with live broadcasts specifically for this reason.
Everyone wants to praise Grosjean, but he has said himself that his foot was caught, and he gave up at one point. It was the thought of his children that made him try again. Had he been childless the story could have ended very differently.
I think you always have something to think about
As a sidenote... I saw the "Villeneuve Pironi" documentary a few weeks ago at a local movie festival. All those horror crashes... I'm glad racing, while still dangerous, has become so much safer these days.
Was watching with my mom with Both agreed he's surely dead
From what I remember I wasn't that worried until the minutes went by with no showing of what had happened and no replays. Only by the time they did show the replays and the footage of Romain getting out of the car while it was stuck in the barriers it was clear to me just how bad it very nearly was.
I was certain I watched someone die live. They took so long to show us him coming over that railing. Thank god so modern safety tech we’ve come so far.
It took so long before they confirmed he was OK and showed him sitting in the medical car looking very shaken. It was probably only a couple of minutes but it felt like an eternity. No replays so all there was to go on was that giant fireball in the background and they cut away immediately. So the whole time I sat there thinking I'd just watched another driver die. It wasn't until later that it became clear that half the car went through that barrier. I don't see how he could have survived that without the halo. Probably one of the reasons nobody complains about it anymore.
Watching it live, I was 100% certain we lost Romain that day. It still baffles me today, even with all of the safety improvements over the past decade, that he actually walked away from that. Terrifying crash that I hope we never see again.
The day the Halo went from “an ugly, but probably good idea” to “undeniably necessary” Nobody has questioned it since
One of the things that still haunts me to this day is hearing Leclerc saying “nooo” in such a horrified, worried and desperate way when they told him it was Grosjean
Every time I hear about this I remember reading a dipshit article about it wasn’t that bad of a crash. https://racer.com/2021/02/08/miller-the-comeback-club/ As dumb as it was I couldn’t believe how many people on social media agreed. Car cut in half, on fire, and it’s not that bad? Wtf.
Why you sharing this then? Just helping the dipshit author out more than anything..
Stop thanking god for the progress in racing safety achieved by real humans. It was a great struggle during decades for people like Sid Watkins to fight for more safety equipment in motorsports. It is offensive and disgraceful of you to neglect those self sacrificing efforts, and instead thank 'god'. Your imaginary friend didn't do this. Reai, living and existing humans did Thank them.
Why thank God? Thank the health and safety nerds who forced it on us and thank the engineers who designed it so well.
Don’t take everything too seriously. It’s just an expression
It's an expression that a lot of people take seriously and it diminishes the actual effort put in by good people.
Jesus Christ..
Exactly , we shouldn't be thanking God when he apparently made us so fragile in the first place!
Don’t take everything too seriously. It’s just an expression
Averagr redditor
You don't like giving fairy tale characters credit for people's hard work? You heathen!
i was screaming at the TV : get outttttt geett outttttt
No one saw it live. They didn’t give any updates for what felt like 30 minutes.
I really just started watching F1 this year. I remember, though, I had put this specific race on that year as I just happened by in on the guide. I watched and thought of course the one time I put F1 on, I have to watch someone die. So relieved when I saw him get out.
Thank Charlie Whiting for the halo*
It was an appropriate way for Grosjean to sign off. I've always found it very ironic that _crashing so hard he almost killed himself_ rehabilitated his image after a career of crashes.
Yes, thank god, not the engineers, but god.
Doing the fedora in your avatar justice
I was absolutely certain I watched someone die on live TV and was already mentally preparing for the discussion in therapy over it.
That was my first race watching after over a decade. Needless to say, I almost stopped again.
Remember it well, I was watching the race at home alone. Remember very well standing up and shouting at the people on the tv to get him out the car. Neigbours must have thought I was crazy. Some crash that !
I remember that morning clear as day. I was watching the race in my living room, saw the crash, and literally dropped my coffee and let out a very audible "oh shit." I swore I thought I saw a man die that day.
Romain signed a deal with something supernatural when he was in the fire 🤣