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Romain Grosjean was fortunate to avoid more serious burns after his helmet visor melted during his fiery accident at the Bahrain Grand Prix, FIA doctor Ian Roberts revealed.
Roberts entered the flames to help the Haas Grosjean driver escape over the barrier after he and the driver of the medical car Alan van der Merwe quickly joined the sheriffs at the scene.
Roberts revealed that the first thing he had told the French driver was to “sit down” and explained: “He was very shaky and his visor was completely opaque and melted. I had to remove the helmet to check that everything else was okay.
“He had some pain in his foot and hands, so from that moment we knew it was safe enough to move him to the [medical] car, a little more protection, put some gel on the burns and then take him to the ambulance and the medical center. ”
Grosjean was engulfed in a fireball after his car broke in two on impact during the crash, but the French driver managed to escape the flames with minor burns.
Such scenes are extremely rare in F1, due to major safety design factors around the fuel tanks, and Roberts revealed that despite the heavy impact, the medical team’s first concern was to verify the effects of the fire.
“From that sort of thing, it’s going to be flames, smoke inhalation, airway problems, but nothing got into his helmet, we’ve had a look at it too,” said Roberts, whose face was scorched in the rescue.
“When we arrived [it was a] Very strange scene, where you have half a car pointing in the wrong direction and just on the other side of the barrier a mass of heat. Then looking to the right at that point, I could see Romain trying to get up.
“We needed some way to get to him, we have the marshal there with the fire extinguisher, that was enough to drive the flame away as Romain got up high enough to then stretch him out and pull him over the barrier.
“Looking at him clinically, we were quite happy with him from the point of view of the life-threatening injuries, so I was just trying to make him feel comfortable with the injuries that we could see.”
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