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Was anybody else watching the F1 race yesterday from Bahrain? Wife and I were watching it live when Romain Grosjean crashed coming out of T4. It was one of those Hollywood crashes complete with a huge fireball and Grosjean climbing out of fire. It's a miracle he's alive.
Grosjean veered right to avoid a car that was coming back on track to his left, but he clipped the car behind him with his right rear tire sending him basically head on into an armco barrier. The front half of his car penetrated the horizontal armco rails and wedged itself there, the car tore in half opening up the fuel cell starting the fire. The monocoque is wedged in the armco at a weird angle and on fire with Grosjean still in it, he manages to undo his belts and climb out where the chase car medical doctor helped him get over the armco and away from the fire.
There are so many ways he could have / should have died in that crash. The HANS device saved his life by keeping him conscious and keeping his neck from breaking from the violent deceleration. The Halo saved his life by keeping the armco from decapitating him. The crash happened yards from a safety worker who had a fire hose on the fire within 10 seconds. Because it was the first lap, the chase car with medical crew was also seconds behind. He also had enough momentum that the monocoque passed through the armco because it could also have easily trapped him in the car preventing him from escaping. His only injuries were burns on his hands.
It was quite a thing, nothing you associate with F1 anymore and their usually boring races. But quite a sobering reality of what can happen.
Grosjean veered right to avoid a car that was coming back on track to his left, but he clipped the car behind him with his right rear tire sending him basically head on into an armco barrier. The front half of his car penetrated the horizontal armco rails and wedged itself there, the car tore in half opening up the fuel cell starting the fire. The monocoque is wedged in the armco at a weird angle and on fire with Grosjean still in it, he manages to undo his belts and climb out where the chase car medical doctor helped him get over the armco and away from the fire.
There are so many ways he could have / should have died in that crash. The HANS device saved his life by keeping him conscious and keeping his neck from breaking from the violent deceleration. The Halo saved his life by keeping the armco from decapitating him. The crash happened yards from a safety worker who had a fire hose on the fire within 10 seconds. Because it was the first lap, the chase car with medical crew was also seconds behind. He also had enough momentum that the monocoque passed through the armco because it could also have easily trapped him in the car preventing him from escaping. His only injuries were burns on his hands.
It was quite a thing, nothing you associate with F1 anymore and their usually boring races. But quite a sobering reality of what can happen.
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