Reflecting on the crash years later<\/a>, Grosjean admitted that he did not know how \u201cviolent\u201d the impact was until he watched the crash on video.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom my point of view, it was a big accident but I didn\u2019t realise the impact or how violent it was from the outside,\u201d described Grosjean.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was only the next day when I asked someone to show me what it looked like that I realised. My wife was actually watching that race with my dad and my kids. They will remember that moment their entire life. They were just spectators waiting to hear something\u2026 waiting to see something from Bahrain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to break the headrest, punching it with my helmet and then I eventually managed to get my helmet through and stand up in the seat,\u201d added the driver. \u201cI realised my left foot was stuck into the chassis and I pulled as hard as I could on my left leg. My shoe stayed in the chassis but my foot came loose so I was free to exit the car.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was 120 kilos of fuel plus the battery \u2013 both were on fire. Dr. Roberts, Alan from the medical car and one fireman were trying to open a gap in the fire to help me get out. I believe that helped me at least to get a vision of where I had to go and where the exit was.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe survival cell is there for you in case of a huge impact. I was intact inside the shell. The chassis is still in one piece, the halo is there and apart from the damage and burn it is still as it should be. I guess that saved my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The wreckage of that VF-20 is currently part of the F1 Exhibition, a testament to both the safety advances that saved Grosjean\u2019s life and the \u201cMan on Fire\u201d himself, as the incident was featured heavily on the Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive:<\/p>\n
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The incident ended his season, and with Haas moving on from both him and Magnussen for the 2021 season, Grosjean was without an F1 ride for the upcoming year. He was scheduled to test with Mercedes at the 2021 French Grand Prix, but COVID-19 struck again, as pandemic-related travel restrictions forced the cancellation of that session.<\/p>\n
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His F1 days seemed to be finished when he signed with Dale Coyne Racing to compete in the IndyCar Series. Grosjean drove for DCR until this season, when he moved to the new Prema Racing team to serve as a reserve driver.<\/p>\n
However, he is now set for one of F1\u2019s great comebacks, in a sport filled with such stories of personal will (see Lauda, Niki).<\/p>\n
Haas announced on Thursday that Grosjean will complete a Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) session on Friday at the Autodromo Internazionale del Mugello.<\/p>\n
According to the team, several of Grosjean\u2019s original Haas crew will participate in the session alongside him. Ayao Komatsu, currently the Haas Team Principal, was Grosjean\u2019s race engineer dating back to their days at Lotus F1 Team, and followed the driver to Haas in 2016 as the new Haas Chief Race Engineer.<\/p>\n
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Dominic Haines, who was Grosjean\u2019s Race Engineer in 2020, will be on-site as the team\u2019s Heritage Chief Engineer. Ian Staniforth, who was Grosjean\u2019s long-time Race Mechanic, will be at the session in his current role as the team\u2019s Support Chief Mechanic. In addition, \u201cseveral additional team members on the operational and garage side\u201d will also be alongside Grosjean during the session.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m absolutely thrilled to be welcoming Romain Grosjean back into a Formula 1 car for the first time in five years but especially proud he\u2019s returning in one of our cars \u2013 it\u2019s only fitting,\u201d said Komatsu in the announcement. \u201cRomain and I have worked together throughout his entire Formula 1 career so this test at Mugello is of particular significance to us both. I\u2019m delighted he embraced the opportunity to come and get back behind the wheel with us, a day that\u2019s going to be made extra special by having so many members of the original crew back together to witness it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should be a fun day and knowing Romain as I do, I know he\u2019ll want to give it his all as usual \u2013 I\u2019d expect nothing less, not least as we\u2019ve talked about making this happen for a long time now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grosjean called the upcoming session \u201ctruly something special\u201d in the team\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m incredibly grateful to Gene Haas and to Ayao Komatsu for inviting me to participate in the TPC at Mugello,\u201d stated Grosjean. \u201cTo say I\u2019m excited to get back behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car would naturally be an understatement. I really can\u2019t believe it\u2019s been almost five years, but to come back and have this outing with my old team is truly something special. I\u2019m excited to see everyone, I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll spend a bit of time reminiscing about the old days, but I\u2019m also keen to be of use regarding the trackside agenda with the VF-23 \u2013 it\u2019s great the team now has the TPC program as part of its on-going development.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grosjean\u2019s return to the track, and his ultimate comeback, will be special for another reason.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll finally get to wear the helmet his children had designed for him to wear when he closed out the 2020 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinally, my kids had designed my helmet for what was meant to be my final grand prix in Abu Dhabi back in 2020 \u2013 I\u2019m at last going to be able to give it a go in a Formula 1 car on Friday,\u201d added Grosjean.<\/p>\n
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When he does, he\u2019ll complete an incredible personal comeback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last time Romain Grosjean was in the cockpit of a Formula 1 car, the unthinkable happened. And…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[86843,86840,49,48,578,576,86842,577,3017,86841,39031,86482,82],"class_list":["post-168593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-alan-van-der-merwe","tag-bahrain-grand-prix","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula-1-car","tag-formula1","tag-haas-f1-team","tag-ian-roberts","tag-kevin-magnussen","tag-romain-grosjean","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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