10 ms·

Romain Grosjean walked away from F1’s scariest crash in decades

108 points by Ashoka_rkt 6y ago

singhkays 6y ago
> After hitting the guardrail at about 137mph (220km/h), Grosjean's car ripped in half and then burst into flames—something that hasn't happened for over 30 years. To make matters worse, the front half penetrated between the guardrails that lined this section of track. As crashes go, this one was more reminiscent of the bad-old days of F1, the kind that claimed the lives of drivers like Roger Williamson or Francois Cevert. This.....just sounds so horrific and a nightmare scenario for the driver. At that speed I wonder how much of a sense a driver has of going through this experience vs it's over in an instant. Overall, it's a testament to engineering, that a person can walk away alive from a crash like this.
- cjbconnor 6y ago
  I've spun off the track going about 50mph before and my dad's spun at about 120mph. We both agree that there's a split second where you realize something's gone wrong but after that your training kicks in and you take your hands off the wheel/push in the brake/clutch. The spin itself doesn't exactly happen instantaneously, but it feels like it's over pretty quick. Once the car stops it can take a second or two to get your bearings, figure out which way the car is facing, etc.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > Overall, it's a testament to engineering, that a person can walk away alive from a crash like this. Not just to engineering, but also the training and performance of all the track stewards - first person to put a fire extinguisher on the wreck was 7 (!) seconds after the crash. That's unbelievably fast. Grosjean survived due to every person and every piece of technology working exactly as they should.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    > Grosjean survived due to every person and every piece of technology working exactly as they should. I think this misses a couple of key points. The only reason his car tore in half and caught fire was because the barrier failed spectacularly. It’s absolutely not supposed to do that. LeClerc had a bigger crash in Monza this year, and it wasn’t nearly as dramatic. So this incident was caused by a piece of safety technology failing catastrophically, with a whole bunch of other safety tech working as intended to save his life. Also it’s good the marshals and medical crew were there so quickly (as the medical car follows the pack on the first lap). But they basically contributed nothing to Grosjean’s survival. He was completely engulfed in flames for 18 seconds. He survived because his flame protection worked (he got his burns from using his hands to climb over the hot barrier, not from exposure to flames), and because he wasn’t incapacitated by the crash. If he had been knocked unconscious or injured too badly to move, he would have burnt to death in there. The couple of fire extinguishers they had on the car weren’t doing anything to a fire of that size.
    - nafey 6y ago
      Can you please explain how the barrier failed in a bit more detail?
      - thspimpolds 6y ago
        It caught his nose between one of the ribbons of rail. That caused his car to pierce the barrier instead of having its energy dissipated. Also there is a theory that the pole holding up the rails didnt shear off at all and thats why the car got snapped in half.
      - tsomctl 6y ago
        I'd say it's didn't necessarily fail, it was just a bad design. It consisted of steel posts in the ground, with stamped steel sections running horizontally. Grosjean's car got wedged in between two of the horizontal rails. It actually succeeded in stopping the 150 mph car from flying off into the desert. In comparison, a smooth concrete barrier would cause the car to just slide along it (hopefully).
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  I have crashed with my cart pretty bad. At some point I realized that I will go off track and looked where it will be going. I remember looking for a way out but then I saw the wall and took my hands off the wheel right before impact. It was over pretty quickly and most what I did was just instincts from driving. Only after the crash I put everything together consciously. I would imagine the same for Grosjean. It’s all automated responses.
  - kreeben 6y ago
    Why is taking your hands of the wheel such a good thing to do in a situation like this? Is it because the spin of the vehicle would be over with sooner if you let it have its way?
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      it's to prevent injuries to your thumbs/wrists.
    - piva00 6y ago
      It's because the driving wheel jerk from the front wheels being forced to turn will break your thumbs and/or other fingers. You instinctively take your hands off the wheel if you have raced karts enough to get into a crash where you hurt your thumbs, that or you've trained to do it. I even do it on racing sims some times, completely out of instinct.
    - o-__-o 6y ago
      Everyone’s talking about go karts (and older cars) but this is not the problem with modern drive by wire cars (in an emergency my car will shutdown the electronic steering module which will only give me like 10 degrees of steering, lock-to-lock). The real issue is with the airbag destroying your hands/wrists and chemical burns that come along with it.
tpl 6y ago
Watching him get out of the car after the fireball was a huge relief! Great to see all the safety tech in use at F1 working and delivering such a great result (the Halo and firesuit in particular here). The driver will likely be discharged from the hospital in the next 1-2 days. Very amazing! Best wishes of recovery to Romain!
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  Very sad that this is likely his last race in F1 though. He gets a lot of flack for crashing all the time, and complaining on the radio, but he seems like one of the nicest guys in the sport. The palms of his hands were burnt and there were reports he had cracked ribs, so it doesn’t seem like he’ll be back in the car for the last two races.
mmastrac 6y ago
I found the discussion of how the new halo device in F1 saved his life to be very interesting. https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/30416593/romain-grosjean-halo-safety-device-saved-my-life https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/30416593/romain-grosjean-... https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/k3sflu/i_did_a_real_fast_3d_render_for_any_doubters_left/ https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/k3sflu/i_did_a_re...
second--shift 6y ago
Grosjean has a bit of a reputation for binning it on Sunday, but glad to see that he is ok. Scary crash.
- CWuestefeld 6y ago
  Maybe it's worth mentioning Grosjean's history here. As a rookie he was widely faulted for being faulty judgment, causing frequent crashes with other drivers when a more experienced driver wouldn't have stuck their nose in. It was clear how hard he was trying to do the right thing, yet the harder he tried, the worse the problem seemed to get, and there was talk about dropping him from the team. Much to his credit, he recognized that he was unable to solve the problem on his own. Drivers tend to have big egos, beating their chests and blaming other people and their equipment. But Grosjean took responsibility, and in interviews you could see how it was breaking his heart to realize how this problem was likely to cost him his career. So he swallowed his pride and started to work with a sports psychologist, who helped him gain better control of his actions. The turn-around in his on-track behavior was quickly evident, and his willingness to take responsibility and look outside for help made him a much better driver.
JadoJodo 6y ago
My Dad is a big F1 fan and we were discussing yesterday. While the halo[0] was once a controversial requirement (affected visibility), it's almost certainly what saved Romain's life[1]. [0] - https://youtu.be/3-3gIAkYEX8 https://youtu.be/3-3gIAkYEX8 [1] - https://youtu.be/zM-ixqBQNcQ https://youtu.be/zM-ixqBQNcQ
- Ashoka_rkt 6y ago
  great video on the Halo!
- justin66 6y ago
  The amazing thing is that the halo’s utility was still argued about and debated after the 2018 crash in Belgium between Alonso and Leclerc. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wMymLt7NOTg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wMymLt7NOTg
OskarS 6y ago
Watching the race live was a terrifying experience. You just saw an exploding fireball at the back of the field, and your blood just ran cold. F1 cars don't explode that way, it's just not something that happens anymore. And you can't imagine anyone walking away alive from it. The couple of minutes between seeing the crash and getting the reports that Grosjean had walked out of the car alive was just awful. Seeing the replays afterwards, it reminded me of the footage of Niki Lauda's crash at the 1976 German Grand Prix. He was caught in a fiery inferno for something like 40-50 seconds, which severely damaged his lungs and face and disfigured him for life. Six weeks later, with bandages still covering his head, he was back on track, racing again. He would go on to win several championships. Luckily, it seems like Romain got away with much lighter wounds. I was thinking to myself during the race about the 19 other drives, thinking "how do you go sit in a car and race for 90 minutes after seeing that happen?", but these guys are made of sterner stuff than me. Thank god for the halo, and the hardened monocoque (which basically stayed intact after a 200 kph crash!), and the improved firesuits, and the medical car following at the start, and the marshals at the side of the track with fire extinguishers, and a thousand other small safety measures. Romain Grosjean is alive today because of decades of tireless work making the sport safer. Thank god for Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Sid Watkins, Charlie Whiting and everyone else who has worked tirelessly to this end.
- slowwriter 6y ago
  I also saw the race live and like you I was truly horrified. At first the commentators said “It’s a Haas!” and for some reason I assumed it was MAG for a moment. My first thought was: “He’s dead.” I never realized that there is a medical car trailing the field on the first lap of every race. Just moments after the crash the med car driver and doctor hopped out and began extinguishing the flames and were able to help Grosjean get over the rail that he had split open. I’m amazed that he was able to get out and walk away from that. When you watch the footage it seems like he is in the flaming inferno forever! There are couple of criticisms that has been floating around that I don’t entirely disagree with: If the guard rail hadn’t failed the car probably wouldn’t have split in half and caught fire like that. Though to be fair, who’s to say what could have happened with an almost frontal impact at that speed, regardless of what he had crashed into. The other one is more of an observation than an actual criticism: If he had been knocked unconscious he wouldn’t have had a chance. Though there were multiple people with fire extinguishers there’s no way they could have put the fire out fast enough to drag him out of the car. Which again feeds into the whole ‘the guard rail shouldn’t have failed, and if it hadn’t the car wouldn’t have caught fire’ deal. All that said though, the level of safety built into these cars is absolutely amazing: The halo, the survival cell and things like that were put to the ultimate test and really saved the day alongside the brave first responders.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lmilcin 6y ago
It kinda seems like Romain used all technology available to save his live. To be able to hit guardrail at 220km/h which dissipated the energy without killing the driver of deceleration, have the car ripped apart on purpose, have the flimsy compartment keep its integrity without anything penetrating the driver, have fuel contained and only a little bit of it spill, have the suit save him from almost all of burns.
amanzi 6y ago
The scene at 1:18 is horrifying! https://youtu.be/ZQ7_En2xEm4?t=78 https://youtu.be/ZQ7_En2xEm4?t=78 You see the driver engulfed in flames while the track staff try to extinguish the fire. Such an amazing story that the driver walked away relatively unharmed. Great work by the safety crew.
Waterluvian 6y ago
There's something about the night time lighting quality of the embedded video that's absolutely ridiculous to me. It almost feels like a video game.
RobLach 6y ago
Hard to imagine climbing out of this: https://i.redd.it/p3spidsev6261.png https://i.redd.it/p3spidsev6261.png less than 30 seconds after a 130mph/55G crash through a metal barrier and sitting inside a fireball
Ashoka_rkt 6y ago
Crash analysis.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAeQHfwtr5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAeQHfwtr5s

108 points by Ashoka_rkt 6y ago

> After hitting the guardrail at about 137mph (220km/h), Grosjean's car ripped in half and then burst into flames—something that hasn't happened for over 30 years. To make matters worse, the front half penetrated between the guardrails that lined this section of track. As crashes go, this one was more reminiscent of the bad-old days of F1, the kind that claimed the lives of drivers like Roger Williamson or Francois Cevert. This.....just sounds so horrific and a nightmare scenario for the driver. At that speed I wonder how much of a sense a driver has of going through this experience vs it's over in an instant. Overall, it's a testament to engineering, that a person can walk away alive from a crash like this.

cjbconnor 6y ago
I've spun off the track going about 50mph before and my dad's spun at about 120mph. We both agree that there's a split second where you realize something's gone wrong but after that your training kicks in and you take your hands off the wheel/push in the brake/clutch. The spin itself doesn't exactly happen instantaneously, but it feels like it's over pretty quick. Once the car stops it can take a second or two to get your bearings, figure out which way the car is facing, etc.
mschuster91 6y ago
> Overall, it's a testament to engineering, that a person can walk away alive from a crash like this. Not just to engineering, but also the training and performance of all the track stewards - first person to put a fire extinguisher on the wreck was 7 (!) seconds after the crash. That's unbelievably fast. Grosjean survived due to every person and every piece of technology working exactly as they should.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  > Grosjean survived due to every person and every piece of technology working exactly as they should. I think this misses a couple of key points. The only reason his car tore in half and caught fire was because the barrier failed spectacularly. It’s absolutely not supposed to do that. LeClerc had a bigger crash in Monza this year, and it wasn’t nearly as dramatic. So this incident was caused by a piece of safety technology failing catastrophically, with a whole bunch of other safety tech working as intended to save his life. Also it’s good the marshals and medical crew were there so quickly (as the medical car follows the pack on the first lap). But they basically contributed nothing to Grosjean’s survival. He was completely engulfed in flames for 18 seconds. He survived because his flame protection worked (he got his burns from using his hands to climb over the hot barrier, not from exposure to flames), and because he wasn’t incapacitated by the crash. If he had been knocked unconscious or injured too badly to move, he would have burnt to death in there. The couple of fire extinguishers they had on the car weren’t doing anything to a fire of that size.
  - nafey 6y ago
    Can you please explain how the barrier failed in a bit more detail?
    - thspimpolds 6y ago
      It caught his nose between one of the ribbons of rail. That caused his car to pierce the barrier instead of having its energy dissipated. Also there is a theory that the pole holding up the rails didnt shear off at all and thats why the car got snapped in half.
    - tsomctl 6y ago
      I'd say it's didn't necessarily fail, it was just a bad design. It consisted of steel posts in the ground, with stamped steel sections running horizontally. Grosjean's car got wedged in between two of the horizontal rails. It actually succeeded in stopping the 150 mph car from flying off into the desert. In comparison, a smooth concrete barrier would cause the car to just slide along it (hopefully).
spaetzleesser 6y ago
I have crashed with my cart pretty bad. At some point I realized that I will go off track and looked where it will be going. I remember looking for a way out but then I saw the wall and took my hands off the wheel right before impact. It was over pretty quickly and most what I did was just instincts from driving. Only after the crash I put everything together consciously. I would imagine the same for Grosjean. It’s all automated responses.
- kreeben 6y ago
  Why is taking your hands of the wheel such a good thing to do in a situation like this? Is it because the spin of the vehicle would be over with sooner if you let it have its way?
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    it's to prevent injuries to your thumbs/wrists.
  - piva00 6y ago
    It's because the driving wheel jerk from the front wheels being forced to turn will break your thumbs and/or other fingers. You instinctively take your hands off the wheel if you have raced karts enough to get into a crash where you hurt your thumbs, that or you've trained to do it. I even do it on racing sims some times, completely out of instinct.
  - o-__-o 6y ago
    Everyone’s talking about go karts (and older cars) but this is not the problem with modern drive by wire cars (in an emergency my car will shutdown the electronic steering module which will only give me like 10 degrees of steering, lock-to-lock). The real issue is with the airbag destroying your hands/wrists and chemical burns that come along with it.

tpl 6y ago

Watching him get out of the car after the fireball was a huge relief! Great to see all the safety tech in use at F1 working and delivering such a great result (the Halo and firesuit in particular here). The driver will likely be discharged from the hospital in the next 1-2 days. Very amazing! Best wishes of recovery to Romain!

AmericanChopper 6y ago
Very sad that this is likely his last race in F1 though. He gets a lot of flack for crashing all the time, and complaining on the radio, but he seems like one of the nicest guys in the sport. The palms of his hands were burnt and there were reports he had cracked ribs, so it doesn’t seem like he’ll be back in the car for the last two races.

mmastrac 6y ago

I found the discussion of how the new halo device in F1 saved his life to be very interesting. https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/30416593/romain-grosjean-halo-safety-device-saved-my-life https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/30416593/romain-grosjean-... https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/k3sflu/i_did_a_real_fast_3d_render_for_any_doubters_left/ https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/k3sflu/i_did_a_re...

second--shift 6y ago

Grosjean has a bit of a reputation for binning it on Sunday, but glad to see that he is ok. Scary crash.

CWuestefeld 6y ago
Maybe it's worth mentioning Grosjean's history here. As a rookie he was widely faulted for being faulty judgment, causing frequent crashes with other drivers when a more experienced driver wouldn't have stuck their nose in. It was clear how hard he was trying to do the right thing, yet the harder he tried, the worse the problem seemed to get, and there was talk about dropping him from the team. Much to his credit, he recognized that he was unable to solve the problem on his own. Drivers tend to have big egos, beating their chests and blaming other people and their equipment. But Grosjean took responsibility, and in interviews you could see how it was breaking his heart to realize how this problem was likely to cost him his career. So he swallowed his pride and started to work with a sports psychologist, who helped him gain better control of his actions. The turn-around in his on-track behavior was quickly evident, and his willingness to take responsibility and look outside for help made him a much better driver.

JadoJodo 6y ago

My Dad is a big F1 fan and we were discussing yesterday. While the halo[0] was once a controversial requirement (affected visibility), it's almost certainly what saved Romain's life[1]. [0] - https://youtu.be/3-3gIAkYEX8 https://youtu.be/3-3gIAkYEX8 [1] - https://youtu.be/zM-ixqBQNcQ https://youtu.be/zM-ixqBQNcQ

Ashoka_rkt 6y ago
great video on the Halo!
justin66 6y ago
The amazing thing is that the halo’s utility was still argued about and debated after the 2018 crash in Belgium between Alonso and Leclerc. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wMymLt7NOTg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wMymLt7NOTg

OskarS 6y ago

Watching the race live was a terrifying experience. You just saw an exploding fireball at the back of the field, and your blood just ran cold. F1 cars don't explode that way, it's just not something that happens anymore. And you can't imagine anyone walking away alive from it. The couple of minutes between seeing the crash and getting the reports that Grosjean had walked out of the car alive was just awful. Seeing the replays afterwards, it reminded me of the footage of Niki Lauda's crash at the 1976 German Grand Prix. He was caught in a fiery inferno for something like 40-50 seconds, which severely damaged his lungs and face and disfigured him for life. Six weeks later, with bandages still covering his head, he was back on track, racing again. He would go on to win several championships. Luckily, it seems like Romain got away with much lighter wounds. I was thinking to myself during the race about the 19 other drives, thinking "how do you go sit in a car and race for 90 minutes after seeing that happen?", but these guys are made of sterner stuff than me. Thank god for the halo, and the hardened monocoque (which basically stayed intact after a 200 kph crash!), and the improved firesuits, and the medical car following at the start, and the marshals at the side of the track with fire extinguishers, and a thousand other small safety measures. Romain Grosjean is alive today because of decades of tireless work making the sport safer. Thank god for Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Sid Watkins, Charlie Whiting and everyone else who has worked tirelessly to this end.

slowwriter 6y ago
I also saw the race live and like you I was truly horrified. At first the commentators said “It’s a Haas!” and for some reason I assumed it was MAG for a moment. My first thought was: “He’s dead.” I never realized that there is a medical car trailing the field on the first lap of every race. Just moments after the crash the med car driver and doctor hopped out and began extinguishing the flames and were able to help Grosjean get over the rail that he had split open. I’m amazed that he was able to get out and walk away from that. When you watch the footage it seems like he is in the flaming inferno forever! There are couple of criticisms that has been floating around that I don’t entirely disagree with: If the guard rail hadn’t failed the car probably wouldn’t have split in half and caught fire like that. Though to be fair, who’s to say what could have happened with an almost frontal impact at that speed, regardless of what he had crashed into. The other one is more of an observation than an actual criticism: If he had been knocked unconscious he wouldn’t have had a chance. Though there were multiple people with fire extinguishers there’s no way they could have put the fire out fast enough to drag him out of the car. Which again feeds into the whole ‘the guard rail shouldn’t have failed, and if it hadn’t the car wouldn’t have caught fire’ deal. All that said though, the level of safety built into these cars is absolutely amazing: The halo, the survival cell and things like that were put to the ultimate test and really saved the day alongside the brave first responders.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

lmilcin 6y ago

It kinda seems like Romain used all technology available to save his live. To be able to hit guardrail at 220km/h which dissipated the energy without killing the driver of deceleration, have the car ripped apart on purpose, have the flimsy compartment keep its integrity without anything penetrating the driver, have fuel contained and only a little bit of it spill, have the suit save him from almost all of burns.

amanzi 6y ago

The scene at 1:18 is horrifying! https://youtu.be/ZQ7_En2xEm4?t=78 https://youtu.be/ZQ7_En2xEm4?t=78 You see the driver engulfed in flames while the track staff try to extinguish the fire. Such an amazing story that the driver walked away relatively unharmed. Great work by the safety crew.

Waterluvian 6y ago

There's something about the night time lighting quality of the embedded video that's absolutely ridiculous to me. It almost feels like a video game.

RobLach 6y ago

Hard to imagine climbing out of this: https://i.redd.it/p3spidsev6261.png https://i.redd.it/p3spidsev6261.png less than 30 seconds after a 130mph/55G crash through a metal barrier and sitting inside a fireball

Ashoka_rkt 6y ago

Crash analysis.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAeQHfwtr5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAeQHfwtr5s