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MANAMA (Reuters) – Rescuers had only a small window of opportunity to help Romain Grosjean miraculously escape an accident on the first lap of Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix, Formula One deputy medical delegate Ian Roberts said. .
The French pilot’s Haas split in half and was engulfed in flames as he passed through protective barriers immediately after departure, following contact with Daniil Kvyat’s AlphaTauri.
“It looked like an oven,” Roberts, who was seen running into the fire, with a bare helmet, told reporters.
“He was red with flames and you could see him trying to get out and gradually he was moving further and further away.”
Roberts, who is also the FIA’s Formula One medical rescue coordinator, medical car driver Alan van der Merwe and firefighters were the first to arrive and were hailed as heroes for braving the flames and putting Grosjean to safety.
“There was a fire marshal quickly on the scene and that fire extinguisher push, the gunpowder pushed the flames back enough, once Romain was high enough we were able to get him through the barrier and away,” Roberts said.
“But it was a very small window because as soon as the extinguishing powder advanced, the flames would return shortly after.”
He said he would not have been able to get Grosjean out with the blazing fire if the 34-year-old hadn’t been able to free himself from the wreckage of his car.
Roberts, who like Formula One drivers wears flame retardant overalls, joked that the fire had helped his tan, but that he was not hurt otherwise.
His first priority, he said, had been to make sure that Grosjean, who escaped with burns to his hands and was being treated overnight at a nearby hospital, was not seriously injured.
“It was just a matter of making him sit down briefly just to check that the things that threatened his life were covered and then take him away from the flames.”
Grosjean, in a video from his hospital bed posted online, credited the halo head protection system, added to cars in 2018, with saving his life.
(Report by Abhishek Takle; edited by Clare Fallon)
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