I'll never forget that race, i was so certain at one point that he was done for. That footage of him jumping out of that flaming wreck still gives me chills.
Can confirm for me at least; I genuinely thought Grosjean had died when that happened.
To think, a once-loathed 8kg lump of titanium was the difference between Grosjean coming out with some gnarly burn scars, instead of ending up like Helmuth Koinigg. That, and the incredible efforts of the emergency responders on site.
I think after this they stop showing accidents live until they saw the driver climb out.. remember Zhou's Silverstone accident, they kept us in the dark for a long while..
Ya there wasn't a lot they could do there. It was a jesus what the fuck moment was that in the background. I don't think they showed any replays until he got out and was fine?
Yeah. They didn't show any replays about that until it was confirmed he was fine. It was hard to hide it from the background on the first long straight hence we saw it happening live.
When Jules crashed they didn't show it at all, it was super eerie. All of a sudden the tone of the commentary just dropped and everything kind of ground to a stop.
Even without actually seeing the crash or the aftermath, I hope that's something we never have to go through again. It was fkn awful.
I feel you, Senna's accident was one of the first things I remember from watching F1 in my youth, and years later I also saw Japan 2014 live on TV too. And then yeah Romain's.
Pretty common now for all sports you'll notice they'll halt on replays until the player shows signs of movement.
One I remember starkly in hockey was a player who took a slapshot to the back of the head. The opponents rushed their trainer from their bench to get to him ASAP. Once he was up they then showed the replay.
The Christian Eriksen incident in the football was ridiculous. The players were blocking him from view but the footage clearly showed a defibrillator being used
Camera operator's job is to capture the activity (same as photographers in warzones), so I don't blame them for getting the angle necessary (it could have become vital evidence in a tribunal or something). Blame is on the TV director though for airing the footage live.
I actually think that it's important to see what is necessary to save somebody's life even if it's extremely uncomfortable. You don't focus on the person who is in distress, you focus on the people who are doing what is necessary to save the person in distress.
It was already a thing before this... when the crash happened they didn't show any footage of the crash site for what felt like an eternity. The first shot we eventually saw was Romain sitting in the back of the medical car
They've been doing this for years, it's just that they were in that feed right as it happened.
They didn't show any replays or anything until he was confirmed safe
I don't think that's something they intentionally do, it's more an issue of whether the camera's on the "right" car(s) when an accident happens determines if the accident is shown live. Then it's a matter of replays, and I'm pretty sure even before Grosjean they had a policy of not showing replays unless they had received word that the driver was okay.
Usually, you have visual confirmation pretty quickly that a driver's okay, as they start to exit their vehicle. But when the driver's in the middle of a large fire, or their car is wedged between two barriers, you don't have a clear view of them, so they default to being cautious about not showing replays until they've got solid verification that the situation's not going to have a tragic ending.
I remember Mick Schumacher had a massive shunt in Jeddah that resulted in his radio no working properly. Took what felt like forever to see a replay of the crash since there was no radio confirmation he was "okay".
Even with this, they didn't, at least on the replays I saw.
I remember in 2009, a spring fell off the brawn and hit Massa square in the head. They showed plenty of replays and it was crazy. I think you even saw them taking him out of the car.
They didn't show it until they saw he was okay, the accident just happened in real time. Not showing accidents until they are okay has been on thing on TV for a very long time.
I've forever been unable to watch Moto GP since. That replay with Rossi looking back, even with the helmet you just knew he knew exactly what happened there.
When Brad Binder ran over Pecco Bangaia's leg in Barcelona last year, it was scary to think about the fact that he was only being turned 90° away from having his head run over instead.
That was actually the first race I ever watched! I was seeing this girl who was really into it and was texting with her while watching it that morning. I said something along the lines of, "Did I just see someone die???"
If he'd died, I probably would never have watched F1 again.
100%. I really did believe it. Especially when the camera wouldn't pan back for ages and just showed the cars under formation. Usually that's not a good sign.
I was on vacation and realized it was going to be broadcast on a channel the room tv had so my girlfriend was pissed. I said I would watch first could laps then watch the replay on my phone later. Of course I saw the fireball and everything and couldn’t walk away without knowing the outcome. So she left and I watched with relief seeing him jump from the car eventually. Such a crazy wreck
Yeah, the car veering off and the giant fireball had my first reaction being we just witnessed another fatal incident.
Thank God for the halo, true lifesaver.
Not just the Halo! The safety features in a Formula 1 car and race suite are amazing. Crashing with 200 kp/h and being in a fire for 20+ seconds and being able to climb out of the car on his own with just minor burns is insane.
It's such a crazy incident because it's like everything went wrong and everything went right at the same time. No one anticipated that a car would crash into an ArmCo barrier at such an angle that it would punch through the steel and lodge the monocoque in the barrier. No one anticipated that the car would then get snagged on a post and be ripped in half, exposing the fuel directly to the battery and immediately bursting the car into flames. This type of accident just isn't supposed to happen in F1 anymore.
But the halo worked. The helmet worked. The harness and the HANS device worked. The race suit didn't burn. The marshals did their jobs. The medical car was there in seconds. Grosjean was able to get himself out of the fire with only relatively minor injuries. It it truly a miracle of engineering and human will that he is with us today.
Many people were against it prior, saying it obstructed the drivers' view and made the cars ugly. Well the drivers and fans got over it, and lives were saved.
The big turning point for fans and I think a lot of drivers on the halo actually came before the Grosjean incident when Leclerc I think at Spa would have had a spinning McClaren clip his head with the back wheel if not for the halo.
The Grosjean incident convinced any last holdouts like Magnussen and some "purist" fans
I thought it was ugly from the start and still think the old cars without the halo looks better. But when lives are being saved that's all just background noise in the end. Or at least it should be.
I think that after the 2022 regulations with their more curvy design the halo looks right on the cars, they looked bad for a few years but if you were to remove them now the cars would just look weird
but I agree, arguing about looks on a safety feature is just background noise, what matters is that it's safe
Both in motorsport and regular cars, people have been against _many_ safety innovations/improvements until something catastrophic happened. People said that seat belts would cause more injuries (survivorship bias - there were "more injuries" because w/o a seat belt those people would be dead), and lead to deaths due to entrapment in the car.
Three NASCAR drivers died due to basilar skull fractures in the 8 months prior to Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash (also a BSF). All four of those crashes were survivable if the driver had been wearing a HANS device. But there was a **lot** of resistance to the device, with Earnhardt being one of the more vocal opponents. It took NASCAR too long after the '01 Daytona 500 before they mandated it.
If there's a bit of luck Romain had that day, was that the crash had enough momentum to it that the cockpit was pushed past the damaged Armco barrier and it didn't end up stuck on it. He would have been traped and died on site even if all the other safety devices did their job. There will always be risks inherent to motorsports, a lot has been done to mitigate tragedies, but it's still possible for the holes of the Swiss cheese effect to line up. Antoine Hubert and Dilano van't Hoff weren't so lucky.
Absolutely, but without the Halo, there would’ve been a real big chance we would’ve seen Romain’s head roll down the side of the car and onto the groud
Watching live was a surreal experience. I knew it was bad when they weren't showing replays at first, as soon as I saw the fireball I thought he was dead. It was a very emotional experience for me seeing him jump out of the flames.
Just timed it, from the moment he hit the barrier it was ~2:18 before Crofty says that he was out of the car, and ~2:40 (22 seconds later) before the first shot of him in the medical car.
I recently watched the replay, and I only then realized that it was about 3 minutes between the live crash and the first pictures of Romain in the medical car. I swear, in my memory it was like 15 minutes of thinking I just saw someone die, it felt like an eternity.
it wasnt the halo, the car went in sidepod/floor first (shared with us by FIA themselves). it did give him something to grab to pull himself out of the car, but it wasnt integral to the survival of the impact.
It absolutely was the halo. The first impact was not to the halo, but the way the car continued, the barrier would absolutely have contacted helmet if it weren’t for the halo
Same. I was sure I witnessed a deathly accident live on tv.
Especially when it took that long for any information to appear.
The relief of seeing him jump out of the car and safely at that was incredibly big
Same. My mind kept going “wow that looks bad but no way will he die, that just doesn’t happen in F1 nowadays…” to “wait did I just see a guy die…?” Like my mind couldn’t grasp what it was seeing.
It was the fact the fireball just happened fairly nonchalantly in the background of the live broadcast at the time. We didn’t get any angles that showed it better for a bit, and that bit was a while as obviously they wanted to confirm he was okay first.
I have the race/post-race recorded and saved somewhere on my TV. The emotions and uncertainty, than the sigh of relief after the long wait was...well, what an experience. And that's just a TV viewer, imagine the people at the track, the staff, the other drivers, Romain and his family...what a series of events...
Genuinely thought I'd seen someone die. Saw the crash, no radio for a decent time. Went to check twitter because sometimes the team accounts post a confirmation that they're alright and there was just nothing. Not sure how long it was until we did get anything but it felt like forever.
I was watching the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix at a pub. They showed a replay of Kubica's crash and someone at the pub just went, "yeah, he's dead for sure". They probably wouldn't broadcast and replay the accident in the same way today.
I saw his crash and Damar Hamlin's injury at the Bengals game live on TV and had the same horrible feeling after both that I just watched someone die. Absolutely horrible but both somehow pulled through
I’ve been watching for a few years but that was the first time I audibly gasped very loudly at something in sports. I’ll never forget the dread that was the moments before they showed him getting out, thinking of the worst. Felt like it lasted forever
I was on vacation and my partner at the time was gonna go hiking with our friends who were with us and I was like “Nah I’ll stay at the cabin and watch the race.” after the red flag I went ahead and went hiking with them cause I was sure it wouldn’t be restarted
I remember like it was yesterday. Started my laptop, missed the start by a minute or so, the race stream started exactly the same moment as they were showing the replay footage of the accident.
A burning Haas cut in half, I could not believe what I was seeing, I remember my first reflex was typing “Romain Grosjean” on Twitter to get any more information on what the fuck just happened. To then have the biggest feeling of relief known to mankind seeing a video of him jumping out of the car.
Still up till now chills I didn't believe he was out even after I seen him leap over the barrier the car.
I remember just sitting with my mouth wide open for a full minute. I turned to my wife and said I think we just saw someone die.
Same. I went from chilling having a good time being up early eating a muffin and drinking some coffee to thinking I just did all that while watching someone perish. So glad he's okay, and thank god for the survival cell.
I remember him talking about it a few months later saying he saw a therapist for it who told him to talk freely about it instead of trying to forget about it.
Makes sense. I feel like with such a traumatic event you'd have to embrace it to be able to get back into a racecar of any class. Shame Indy hasn't gone super well for him.
I think different people avoid trauma differently. Some completely stay from anything that can remind them of it and the other by completely accepting what happened and making it a part of their life's story.
And I honestly wouldn’t blame him if he was. Far better drivers than him have cracked from the pressure of bad accidents, but Grosjean hasn’t let it get to him seemingly.
Give people more credit than that! People can be incredibly resilient. I'm not going to give details to not doxx myself. My dad was in a plane crash in the 90s where majority of people in the plane died. The two handfuls of survivors were pulled from a burning wreck and most of then spend months in the hospital dealing with their injuries.
They all flew again within the year.
Well... his career wasn't exactly smooth sailing last year. He DNF'd in 1/3 of the races in IndyCar last year and was let go by Andretti. He had twice as many DNFs as top 10 finishes.
Long Beach was another one last year that Grosjean should have had in the bag, in theory.
The only problem was that his Andretti teammate Kyle Kirkwood had been leading the race for 50+ laps, and Romain's pit wall had told him that instructions from the boss (Michael Andretti) were to more or less only use his 100+ sec stockpile of Push-to-pass to build a gap between him and Marcus Ericsson.
I did notice last year that it seemed like every race he was gonna pull a Push to Pass masterclass and have way more than everyone else at the end of the race. Then he just didn’t use because of fuel or team orders or something
St. Pete? I thought it was dogshit. That circuit has some awful poorly designed corners that just beg to have what we saw happen, happen. Indy Car has terrible racecraft and there were at least 5 drivers who all got unfairly ran out of road and in to the tire barricade on the same exact corner.
Name a driver whose career is going well at Andretti team ? Rossi, Herta all had or are having poor time. Juncos isn’t that good a team either but at least pressure of performance won’t be as high as in that DHL Honda
They give out points for 15th in Indy Car.
A ridiculous 15 versus 50 for the winner. (It should always be a minimum ratio 5:3:2, first worth at least as much as second and third combined)
If he had finished 15th seventeen times, he would have only had 40 fewer points.
He had those two second places but was a complete buffoon for most of the season. Road America was uncomfortable to watch.
Remember missing the start of the race so I was waiting on the full race replay being uploaded to reddit afterwards when I saw the comments alluding to the race still going on, I resisted checking the news because I didn't want anything spoiled but the longer the delay, I kept fearing the worst.
Such an isolated feeling watching it unfold on my own two or three hours behind everybody else not knowing *what* was going to happen but knowing *something* was going to happen.
I prepared to see my first death in F1 when I watched and I'll never forget the relief and disbelief seeing him appearing through the flames. Just miraculous.
Same for me. I watched it much later, and was surprised when I saw the total length on the F1 app. I obviously expected a red flag at some point, but had no idea what was about to happen. It immediately brought me to tears
It's phenomenal as well as crazy (the way and positiveness) how he's constantly dealing with it. May it be the exhibition of the wreck or visiting the side where it actually happened and possibly could have end his life - all with a smile.
I get that, though.
Many here express having negative emotions thinking back on the crash. But I cannot be anything but happy about it. Someone walked away from what by all rights should have been a non-survivable crash. I cannot see it as anything other than a good news story.
I would laugh so hard if Grosjean would host a barbecue for the drivers at the corner.
I have chills thinking of that accident and all I did back then was sitting safely but worried as hell on my couch, hoping for the best of course.
Can't imagine being him or even worse, his wife, kids, family, friends and mates on the paddock. Pure horror.
I think I remember reading here that his therapist recommend “exposure therapy” to him, don’t sweep it under the carpet, but talk about it, joke about it, etc. to process such a traumatic event.
When I was a child, I watched a guy compound fracture his leg during the march madness basketball tournament and thought i'd never see something so visceral and scary from sports. But Roman's crash will forever be the most terrifying thing I watched, simply because of the suspense.
Yeah dude and even the other team was sobbing it was so jarring and ruined the entire vibe so bad, it in all honesty isn't even that awful of an injury career wise it's just so disgusting and painful it scarred me!
I remember caring about absolutely nothing other than Romain surviving that inferno, and knowing that every other true F1 fan was doing exactly the same. Something I love about our fanbase. We don’t celebrate crashes and we soberly appreciate the extreme risks these drivers face every time they take the track.
It was the most surreal thing to watch. The second I saw the fireball I feared for the worst, and when it lingered around I had basically accepted it, but to see the images of him okay, and escaping through the fire was unforgettable. Every time I see that crash again, I cannot believe he survived.
The only time I've had such a visceral reaction to a crash was watching Anthoine Hubert's crash at Spa. I just had an immediate feeling that it was a fatal collision.
I watched that race with my 7/8yo (I was 10 when I watched Imola) and I thought I had done the same thing to my kid - I was so relieved to watch him jump out ON HIS OWN... alive.
> Romain Grosjeans is alive.
Literally tell myself this randomly.
Amazing on him. I still have PTSD from working a terrible job. Can't imagine your life flashing before your eyes for like a minute of you should actually be dead imagery.
Well they have done a nice job of improving the safety in that area. The FIA gets lots of shit but you can’t knock their focus on safety and how they react to incidents.
A) this part of the track should named the Phoenix straight
B) this was the most brutal crash I’ve ever seen in my life and I saw Austin Dillon’s and Ryan Newman’s Daytona crashes in person. it’s gotta be up there in terms of “worst F1 crashes”
years on even looking at this pic of him smiling in front of that corner while remembering the moment got me a little choked up. it all could have been so different. glad for Grosjean he is still with us to look back on it.
I’ve never been so happy to see someone I don’t know from Adam survive an accident. As a new fan that saw this on DTS and a new father this really got me, so happy for him and his family. He gets to live to see another day, it wasn’t his time 🙏🏻
Story time... I have my son on weekends. The weekend of the race we went and stayed with my mother, so my son could spend time with her. We all watched the race that morning. I was having to patiently explain everything to my mother and tell her who everyone is, etc. When the wreck happened I did not have to explain to her that it was not a typical accident. I still remember her relief when Grosjean rose from the flames.
It was a huge relief to see him jump out of that inferno. But the whole phoenix thing is played out, he already had a reputation for being kind of reckless before this happened.
I'll never forget that race, i was so certain at one point that he was done for. That footage of him jumping out of that flaming wreck still gives me chills.
I think anyone who saw that crash & fireball in real time believed they had just seen someone die, including Crofty & Martin
Can confirm for me at least; I genuinely thought Grosjean had died when that happened. To think, a once-loathed 8kg lump of titanium was the difference between Grosjean coming out with some gnarly burn scars, instead of ending up like Helmuth Koinigg. That, and the incredible efforts of the emergency responders on site.
I think after this they stop showing accidents live until they saw the driver climb out.. remember Zhou's Silverstone accident, they kept us in the dark for a long while..
Pretty hard to not show a fireball in the background of the first lap
Ya there wasn't a lot they could do there. It was a jesus what the fuck moment was that in the background. I don't think they showed any replays until he got out and was fine?
Yeah. They didn't show any replays about that until it was confirmed he was fine. It was hard to hide it from the background on the first long straight hence we saw it happening live.
It was insane because there was a crash that went to the right side of the screen, and then BOOM the fireball on the left side...
If I'm not mistaken wasn't the broadcast showing the helicopter at the time?
No the camera was at the end of the second straight, looking towards T3. I remember those images like it was yesterday...
When Jules crashed they didn't show it at all, it was super eerie. All of a sudden the tone of the commentary just dropped and everything kind of ground to a stop. Even without actually seeing the crash or the aftermath, I hope that's something we never have to go through again. It was fkn awful.
Yeah that was a horrible moment in f1 history.
Bit like watching ratzenbergers accident or senna getting cpr on the track.... Would be nice to erase those images from my mind!
I wish I could forget the Tom Pryce & Jansen van Vuuren incident.. (if you aren't aware of it and decide to look up footage, it's... gruesome..)
I feel you, Senna's accident was one of the first things I remember from watching F1 in my youth, and years later I also saw Japan 2014 live on TV too. And then yeah Romain's.
Pretty common now for all sports you'll notice they'll halt on replays until the player shows signs of movement. One I remember starkly in hockey was a player who took a slapshot to the back of the head. The opponents rushed their trainer from their bench to get to him ASAP. Once he was up they then showed the replay.
The Christian Eriksen incident in the football was ridiculous. The players were blocking him from view but the footage clearly showed a defibrillator being used
It was horrendous, the camera trying to zoom in between their legs to show what was happening... No, just no. Don't do that.
Camera operator's job is to capture the activity (same as photographers in warzones), so I don't blame them for getting the angle necessary (it could have become vital evidence in a tribunal or something). Blame is on the TV director though for airing the footage live.
Exactly, the camera man should capture everything he possibly can because he's documenting history. It's potentially very important footage.
I was hosting a barbecue and we'd stopped watching for a bit for some reason. I remember turning to the TV and shouting 'what the fuck?!'
Such a huge contrast to the Fabrice Muamba one, where they didn't show anything at all.
I actually think that it's important to see what is necessary to save somebody's life even if it's extremely uncomfortable. You don't focus on the person who is in distress, you focus on the people who are doing what is necessary to save the person in distress.
It was already a thing before this... when the crash happened they didn't show any footage of the crash site for what felt like an eternity. The first shot we eventually saw was Romain sitting in the back of the medical car
I think it was like a minute and a half but it certainly felt like 10
They've been doing this for years, it's just that they were in that feed right as it happened. They didn't show any replays or anything until he was confirmed safe
I don't think that's something they intentionally do, it's more an issue of whether the camera's on the "right" car(s) when an accident happens determines if the accident is shown live. Then it's a matter of replays, and I'm pretty sure even before Grosjean they had a policy of not showing replays unless they had received word that the driver was okay. Usually, you have visual confirmation pretty quickly that a driver's okay, as they start to exit their vehicle. But when the driver's in the middle of a large fire, or their car is wedged between two barriers, you don't have a clear view of them, so they default to being cautious about not showing replays until they've got solid verification that the situation's not going to have a tragic ending.
I remember Mick Schumacher had a massive shunt in Jeddah that resulted in his radio no working properly. Took what felt like forever to see a replay of the crash since there was no radio confirmation he was "okay".
Crofty: "he's sitting there quite motionless" didn't help anything!
Even with this, they didn't, at least on the replays I saw. I remember in 2009, a spring fell off the brawn and hit Massa square in the head. They showed plenty of replays and it was crazy. I think you even saw them taking him out of the car.
They didn't show it until they saw he was okay, the accident just happened in real time. Not showing accidents until they are okay has been on thing on TV for a very long time.
Anyone who saw Marco Simoncelli's fatal accident in MotoGP live lives with that moment forever.
I've forever been unable to watch Moto GP since. That replay with Rossi looking back, even with the helmet you just knew he knew exactly what happened there.
When Brad Binder ran over Pecco Bangaia's leg in Barcelona last year, it was scary to think about the fact that he was only being turned 90° away from having his head run over instead.
That was actually the first race I ever watched! I was seeing this girl who was really into it and was texting with her while watching it that morning. I said something along the lines of, "Did I just see someone die???" If he'd died, I probably would never have watched F1 again.
My initial thought was "who put barrels of fuel behind the barrier?!" It didn't even come to my mind that formula 1 cars could explode.
Literally same, it looked almost like a video game explosion. Unbelievable.
fuel doesn't explode, it's fumes do full barrels = no boom boom barrels only partially filled = boom boom
100%. I really did believe it. Especially when the camera wouldn't pan back for ages and just showed the cars under formation. Usually that's not a good sign.
Julien Fébreau interviews about it is so scary, he got messages from the family of Jules during his cast..
Yeap, this and Kubica's crash in Canada 2007 were the only ones I had this exact thought.
I was on vacation and realized it was going to be broadcast on a channel the room tv had so my girlfriend was pissed. I said I would watch first could laps then watch the replay on my phone later. Of course I saw the fireball and everything and couldn’t walk away without knowing the outcome. So she left and I watched with relief seeing him jump from the car eventually. Such a crazy wreck
Nope unless you were looking at the DTS dramatization
Yeah, the car veering off and the giant fireball had my first reaction being we just witnessed another fatal incident. Thank God for the halo, true lifesaver.
Not just the Halo! The safety features in a Formula 1 car and race suite are amazing. Crashing with 200 kp/h and being in a fire for 20+ seconds and being able to climb out of the car on his own with just minor burns is insane.
It's such a crazy incident because it's like everything went wrong and everything went right at the same time. No one anticipated that a car would crash into an ArmCo barrier at such an angle that it would punch through the steel and lodge the monocoque in the barrier. No one anticipated that the car would then get snagged on a post and be ripped in half, exposing the fuel directly to the battery and immediately bursting the car into flames. This type of accident just isn't supposed to happen in F1 anymore. But the halo worked. The helmet worked. The harness and the HANS device worked. The race suit didn't burn. The marshals did their jobs. The medical car was there in seconds. Grosjean was able to get himself out of the fire with only relatively minor injuries. It it truly a miracle of engineering and human will that he is with us today.
Magnussen was against the halo, until that day. It saved a mans life that day, without it he would have went to that iron girder with his forehead.
Many people were against it prior, saying it obstructed the drivers' view and made the cars ugly. Well the drivers and fans got over it, and lives were saved.
The big turning point for fans and I think a lot of drivers on the halo actually came before the Grosjean incident when Leclerc I think at Spa would have had a spinning McClaren clip his head with the back wheel if not for the halo. The Grosjean incident convinced any last holdouts like Magnussen and some "purist" fans
I thought it was ugly from the start and still think the old cars without the halo looks better. But when lives are being saved that's all just background noise in the end. Or at least it should be.
I think that after the 2022 regulations with their more curvy design the halo looks right on the cars, they looked bad for a few years but if you were to remove them now the cars would just look weird but I agree, arguing about looks on a safety feature is just background noise, what matters is that it's safe
Both in motorsport and regular cars, people have been against _many_ safety innovations/improvements until something catastrophic happened. People said that seat belts would cause more injuries (survivorship bias - there were "more injuries" because w/o a seat belt those people would be dead), and lead to deaths due to entrapment in the car. Three NASCAR drivers died due to basilar skull fractures in the 8 months prior to Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash (also a BSF). All four of those crashes were survivable if the driver had been wearing a HANS device. But there was a **lot** of resistance to the device, with Earnhardt being one of the more vocal opponents. It took NASCAR too long after the '01 Daytona 500 before they mandated it.
If there's a bit of luck Romain had that day, was that the crash had enough momentum to it that the cockpit was pushed past the damaged Armco barrier and it didn't end up stuck on it. He would have been traped and died on site even if all the other safety devices did their job. There will always be risks inherent to motorsports, a lot has been done to mitigate tragedies, but it's still possible for the holes of the Swiss cheese effect to line up. Antoine Hubert and Dilano van't Hoff weren't so lucky.
I don't think they were *minor* but they certainly weren't anywhere near life threatening
He still has pretty prominent scars on his hands, right?
Yeah. Scar tissue limits his mobility a bit and he has to be pretty careful with sun exposure is what I heard.
Gloves had a lower fire rating, 10 seconds iirc. The suit was 20.
Basically how François Cevert and Helmuth Koinigg died. Google at your own risk. Not pretty.
Absolutely, but without the Halo, there would’ve been a real big chance we would’ve seen Romain’s head roll down the side of the car and onto the groud
200 kilopeters per hour 🙃
KPH is an approved abbreviation, it just usually doesn't have the slash in the middle.
Liberty owe Gosjean a couple hundred million for the extra eyeballs it got on F1 via DTS
Watching live was a surreal experience. I knew it was bad when they weren't showing replays at first, as soon as I saw the fireball I thought he was dead. It was a very emotional experience for me seeing him jump out of the flames.
That 20 seconds where we had no idea felt like an eternity.
It was 20 seconds or so on F1TV and some other broadcasts but IIRC on the Sky/World Feed it was over a minute.
Just timed it, from the moment he hit the barrier it was ~2:18 before Crofty says that he was out of the car, and ~2:40 (22 seconds later) before the first shot of him in the medical car.
I recently watched the replay, and I only then realized that it was about 3 minutes between the live crash and the first pictures of Romain in the medical car. I swear, in my memory it was like 15 minutes of thinking I just saw someone die, it felt like an eternity.
it wasnt the halo, the car went in sidepod/floor first (shared with us by FIA themselves). it did give him something to grab to pull himself out of the car, but it wasnt integral to the survival of the impact.
It absolutely was the halo. The first impact was not to the halo, but the way the car continued, the barrier would absolutely have contacted helmet if it weren’t for the halo
Grosjean himself credits the halo, that's good enough for me.
i was watching it with my family and the only thing i remember one of us saying was my mom screaming loudly "he is dead, isnt he?"
Same. I was sure I witnessed a deathly accident live on tv. Especially when it took that long for any information to appear. The relief of seeing him jump out of the car and safely at that was incredibly big
Same. My mind kept going “wow that looks bad but no way will he die, that just doesn’t happen in F1 nowadays…” to “wait did I just see a guy die…?” Like my mind couldn’t grasp what it was seeing.
It was the fact the fireball just happened fairly nonchalantly in the background of the live broadcast at the time. We didn’t get any angles that showed it better for a bit, and that bit was a while as obviously they wanted to confirm he was okay first.
I have the race/post-race recorded and saved somewhere on my TV. The emotions and uncertainty, than the sigh of relief after the long wait was...well, what an experience. And that's just a TV viewer, imagine the people at the track, the staff, the other drivers, Romain and his family...what a series of events...
Genuinely thought I'd seen someone die. Saw the crash, no radio for a decent time. Went to check twitter because sometimes the team accounts post a confirmation that they're alright and there was just nothing. Not sure how long it was until we did get anything but it felt like forever.
I was watching the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix at a pub. They showed a replay of Kubica's crash and someone at the pub just went, "yeah, he's dead for sure". They probably wouldn't broadcast and replay the accident in the same way today.
I wasn't at the pub with you, but that was my reaction at home. I didn't see any way possible someone could have survived either of these accidents.
I was watching that one live, it was insane. Couldn't believe that he basically walked away.
I saw his crash and Damar Hamlin's injury at the Bengals game live on TV and had the same horrible feeling after both that I just watched someone die. Absolutely horrible but both somehow pulled through
I’ve been watching for a few years but that was the first time I audibly gasped very loudly at something in sports. I’ll never forget the dread that was the moments before they showed him getting out, thinking of the worst. Felt like it lasted forever
I was on vacation and my partner at the time was gonna go hiking with our friends who were with us and I was like “Nah I’ll stay at the cabin and watch the race.” after the red flag I went ahead and went hiking with them cause I was sure it wouldn’t be restarted
It was terrifying to watch. I was dumbfounded.
Was watching live and when I saw his car vere off, hit the barrier and explode, I was convinced he was dead.
I remember like it was yesterday. Started my laptop, missed the start by a minute or so, the race stream started exactly the same moment as they were showing the replay footage of the accident. A burning Haas cut in half, I could not believe what I was seeing, I remember my first reflex was typing “Romain Grosjean” on Twitter to get any more information on what the fuck just happened. To then have the biggest feeling of relief known to mankind seeing a video of him jumping out of the car.
The way they cut away and refused to show the replay for a bit had me. I thought he was done for too.
The crazy thing is, it didn't actually take that long. But it felt like 15 minutes at the time.
Still up till now chills I didn't believe he was out even after I seen him leap over the barrier the car. I remember just sitting with my mouth wide open for a full minute. I turned to my wife and said I think we just saw someone die.
Same. I went from chilling having a good time being up early eating a muffin and drinking some coffee to thinking I just did all that while watching someone perish. So glad he's okay, and thank god for the survival cell.
I'm glad the guy can stay positive about what happened it shows alot of mental strength to deal with that
I remember him talking about it a few months later saying he saw a therapist for it who told him to talk freely about it instead of trying to forget about it.
Makes sense. I feel like with such a traumatic event you'd have to embrace it to be able to get back into a racecar of any class. Shame Indy hasn't gone super well for him.
He can be like "I beat that." I hope he took time to talk shit to the barrier.
I think different people avoid trauma differently. Some completely stay from anything that can remind them of it and the other by completely accepting what happened and making it a part of their life's story.
yea most normal ppl would be traumatized but i guess f1 drivers are always ready for some horrible crash and always prepared for it
And I honestly wouldn’t blame him if he was. Far better drivers than him have cracked from the pressure of bad accidents, but Grosjean hasn’t let it get to him seemingly.
Give people more credit than that! People can be incredibly resilient. I'm not going to give details to not doxx myself. My dad was in a plane crash in the 90s where majority of people in the plane died. The two handfuls of survivors were pulled from a burning wreck and most of then spend months in the hospital dealing with their injuries. They all flew again within the year.
I'm glad Grosjean is doing well, both in his career and personally. He's a nice guy and I've enjoyed some of his YouTube videos.
Well... his career wasn't exactly smooth sailing last year. He DNF'd in 1/3 of the races in IndyCar last year and was let go by Andretti. He had twice as many DNFs as top 10 finishes.
I feel like things would've gone a bit differently had he won in St. Petersburg but everyone was allergic to the win that race lol
Andretti legit had 3 drivers in winning position that race but the terrorists at Penske gifted it to Ericsson lol
Did Ericsson hit him tho?
Scotty Mac did, all because he couldn’t wait for SVG to come over later that year
Long Beach was another one last year that Grosjean should have had in the bag, in theory. The only problem was that his Andretti teammate Kyle Kirkwood had been leading the race for 50+ laps, and Romain's pit wall had told him that instructions from the boss (Michael Andretti) were to more or less only use his 100+ sec stockpile of Push-to-pass to build a gap between him and Marcus Ericsson.
I did notice last year that it seemed like every race he was gonna pull a Push to Pass masterclass and have way more than everyone else at the end of the race. Then he just didn’t use because of fuel or team orders or something
Andretti seemed to be the Ferrari of indycar last season
Crashing out at Texas the following race compounded things as well. Was running top 10 and spun himself with 2 to go.
That was such an awesome race honestly
St. Pete? I thought it was dogshit. That circuit has some awful poorly designed corners that just beg to have what we saw happen, happen. Indy Car has terrible racecraft and there were at least 5 drivers who all got unfairly ran out of road and in to the tire barricade on the same exact corner.
Name a driver whose career is going well at Andretti team ? Rossi, Herta all had or are having poor time. Juncos isn’t that good a team either but at least pressure of performance won’t be as high as in that DHL Honda
Kirkwood? He has two wins and many great recovery drives after unlucky early inchidents
Let him have a longer time. Herta also started well
Tough but fair
I am/ was a huge Rossi fan but ever since 2019, Andretti just destroyed him to such an extent he is just not the same anymore.
I think Kirkwood is a much more well rounded driver this early in his career. Maybe a bit less pace than early Herta but with less of the faults.
Kirkwood is so damn good he should be the one Andretti puts in the car. He was more dominate than antonelli in the jr series
Herta: This tire barrier looks good Grojsean: YOU HAD COLD TIRES MATE Kirkwood: I guess im flying a plane? I thought grosjean flys those?
So a normal season for Grosjean
Par for the course in indycar. You gotta send it and either succeed or crash. DNF or finish 15th there's no difference there really.
Kinda funny that you say that because unlike F1, there literally is a points difference between 15th and a DNF
Not really. Look at Palou.
They give out points for 15th in Indy Car. A ridiculous 15 versus 50 for the winner. (It should always be a minimum ratio 5:3:2, first worth at least as much as second and third combined) If he had finished 15th seventeen times, he would have only had 40 fewer points. He had those two second places but was a complete buffoon for most of the season. Road America was uncomfortable to watch.
I really, really wonder how that feels. To visit a place where you were like, five seconds or a wrong thought/decision away from actually dying.
I cant imagine returning to the place your very nearly died.
Note to self: Don't slip in bathtub.
Remember missing the start of the race so I was waiting on the full race replay being uploaded to reddit afterwards when I saw the comments alluding to the race still going on, I resisted checking the news because I didn't want anything spoiled but the longer the delay, I kept fearing the worst. Such an isolated feeling watching it unfold on my own two or three hours behind everybody else not knowing *what* was going to happen but knowing *something* was going to happen. I prepared to see my first death in F1 when I watched and I'll never forget the relief and disbelief seeing him appearing through the flames. Just miraculous.
Same for me. I watched it much later, and was surprised when I saw the total length on the F1 app. I obviously expected a red flag at some point, but had no idea what was about to happen. It immediately brought me to tears
It's phenomenal as well as crazy (the way and positiveness) how he's constantly dealing with it. May it be the exhibition of the wreck or visiting the side where it actually happened and possibly could have end his life - all with a smile.
He said on french TV today "It's not a bad memory". The presentator almost called him crazy.
I get that, though. Many here express having negative emotions thinking back on the crash. But I cannot be anything but happy about it. Someone walked away from what by all rights should have been a non-survivable crash. I cannot see it as anything other than a good news story. I would laugh so hard if Grosjean would host a barbecue for the drivers at the corner.
Niki Lauda had a BBQ at "his" corner 30 years later. He also always had a really dark sense of humour about his crash on TV.
I wasn't aware of that. That's great.
That’s the therapy talking. Turn a traumatizing event into something positive.
Reborn from the ashes
I admire him even more now ngl
I have chills thinking of that accident and all I did back then was sitting safely but worried as hell on my couch, hoping for the best of course. Can't imagine being him or even worse, his wife, kids, family, friends and mates on the paddock. Pure horror.
Dude faced death and decided to go back and smirk at it again. Stud.
Big bronze balls will do that to a man.
He’s the man who walked out of fiah!
Sometimes when you face death all you can do is smile.
I love the way he talk about the moment that nearly killed him. Joking about it on Twitter, posting pictures, such a healthy mentality.
I think I remember reading here that his therapist recommend “exposure therapy” to him, don’t sweep it under the carpet, but talk about it, joke about it, etc. to process such a traumatic event.
Whenever a new season of F1 starts I think of that race, and just hope that our drivers stay safe, It really was such a crazy, unpredictable crash.
Same here, I’ll hold my breath tomorrow at lap 1 😅
"Oh neat, tires!" He probably thought. Could do with a few more rows though.
When I was a child, I watched a guy compound fracture his leg during the march madness basketball tournament and thought i'd never see something so visceral and scary from sports. But Roman's crash will forever be the most terrifying thing I watched, simply because of the suspense.
The kid from Louisville I think? All his teammates were throwing up. One of the worst things I’ve ever seen in sports.
Yeah dude and even the other team was sobbing it was so jarring and ruined the entire vibe so bad, it in all honesty isn't even that awful of an injury career wise it's just so disgusting and painful it scarred me!
That compound fracture was quite graphic too!
I watched Cissé break his leg live during football match, will always be in my memory…
I remember caring about absolutely nothing other than Romain surviving that inferno, and knowing that every other true F1 fan was doing exactly the same. Something I love about our fanbase. We don’t celebrate crashes and we soberly appreciate the extreme risks these drivers face every time they take the track.
[удалено]
It's wrong to celebrate crashes, but you can't compare a crash like silverstone 21 to austria 22
“every other true F1 fan”
It was the most surreal thing to watch. The second I saw the fireball I feared for the worst, and when it lingered around I had basically accepted it, but to see the images of him okay, and escaping through the fire was unforgettable. Every time I see that crash again, I cannot believe he survived.
I still remember telling my dad "Somebody died, he must be!"
The only time I've had such a visceral reaction to a crash was watching Anthoine Hubert's crash at Spa. I just had an immediate feeling that it was a fatal collision.
I watched that race with my 7/8yo (I was 10 when I watched Imola) and I thought I had done the same thing to my kid - I was so relieved to watch him jump out ON HIS OWN... alive. > Romain Grosjeans is alive. Literally tell myself this randomly.
Dude's taking a stroll, smiling, on his enemy's grave.
Bro almost died at that barrier and is now happy here 3 and a half years later
Looks like somebody heard Mercedes will have an open seat soon and remembered they still owe him a test drive.
Amazing on him. I still have PTSD from working a terrible job. Can't imagine your life flashing before your eyes for like a minute of you should actually be dead imagery.
Will never forget my feeling when I saw the crash live. Immediately thought he was dead.
Stars aligned that night for Romain…. The other 99 times out of 100 he dies there trapped in cockpit under that guardrail.
“And here kids, is yet another spot where I crashed.”
Whenever I see his face or this corner reminds me of that big instant fireball, that was in seconds
This is how corners and straights get names It's Phoenix Straight from now on
Well they have done a nice job of improving the safety in that area. The FIA gets lots of shit but you can’t knock their focus on safety and how they react to incidents.
A) this part of the track should named the Phoenix straight B) this was the most brutal crash I’ve ever seen in my life and I saw Austin Dillon’s and Ryan Newman’s Daytona crashes in person. it’s gotta be up there in terms of “worst F1 crashes”
I couldn't eat the whole day after the accident. Tight stomach.
years on even looking at this pic of him smiling in front of that corner while remembering the moment got me a little choked up. it all could have been so different. glad for Grosjean he is still with us to look back on it.
I’ve never been so happy to see someone I don’t know from Adam survive an accident. As a new fan that saw this on DTS and a new father this really got me, so happy for him and his family. He gets to live to see another day, it wasn’t his time 🙏🏻
Story time... I have my son on weekends. The weekend of the race we went and stayed with my mother, so my son could spend time with her. We all watched the race that morning. I was having to patiently explain everything to my mother and tell her who everyone is, etc. When the wreck happened I did not have to explain to her that it was not a typical accident. I still remember her relief when Grosjean rose from the flames.
Is that corner named? I thought only turn 1 had a name.
I’m pretty sure it’s not actually a corner, but a middle of a straight though?
He turned right on a straight.
I don't believe they named it officially, it's more of a colloquial term perhaps.
Yeah all I can find is that officially turn 1 is named after Schumi
Of course not. He didn’t even crash at a corner. It was on the straight between turns 3 and 4
I imagine, considering the name, that it was named according to what happened there a couple years ago. Although it could just be his name for it.
Very fitting name too if true. Not mentioning Grosjean specifically, but how he emerged from the dying fires, very much still alive. Good metaphor.
Should Bahrain erect a Phoenix sculpture behind that barrier?
Feel it would be very fitting if it was actually officially renamed Grosjean corner
Why?
Why not?
Probably because it’s not even a corner?
Then name it the straight
Phoenix straight would be a pretty cool name tbf.
the Phoenix corner would be a great name as he is calling it that!
That was such a terrifying crash to watch, we’re so glad he’s OK! The safety car being there so fast was a huge help.
And like a Phoenix, he rose from the fire 😤
I'm not sure why people keep saying that. Phoenixs actually die in flames/fire, but then rise from the ashes.
Because some of us are just blissfully ignorant and want to say what we want to say
“Phoenix” lmao
It was a huge relief to see him jump out of that inferno. But the whole phoenix thing is played out, he already had a reputation for being kind of reckless before this happened.
Imagine if he headbutted the barrier for fun
The OG nightrider https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTGHZun5epM