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Romain Grosjean Shows Off His Hands After Horrific Burns From Bahrain Grand Prix

Romain Grosjean Shows Off His Hands After Horrific Burns From Bahrain Grand Prix

The former F1 driver was involved in an awful crash in the Bahrain Grand Prix towards the end of last season and has revealed his injuries.

Ryan Sidle

Ryan Sidle

Former Formula One driver Romain Grosjean has shown off his hands for the first time since his awful crash at the Bahrain Grand Prix in November.

The French driver was involved in an awful crash at the back end of the 2020 season when his Haas car exploded after hitting a barrier.

Fans around the world feared the worst after the huge firebolt from the collision with the safety barrier but stewards and the race doctor got to the scene quickly to remove him from danger.

Grosjean was taken to hospital with burns on his feet and arms and was unable to compete for the final two races of the season, including the second race in Bahrain.

The 34-year-old did arrive back at the track for that second race but had his hands wrapped in a surgical dressing. He has now revealed the after effects of his crash on social media.

On Sunday the driver, whose deal with American team Haas expired at the end of the season, took to Twitter to write, "Full day with no dressing. Bloody hell it feels good. So easy to forget how good our bodies are when working well! Back into dressing for the night before meeting my surgeon tomorrow to check the progress."

Speaking at a press conference about a week after the incident, Grosjean said, "Happy to see you, surprised to say that to media, but yes happy to see you!

"If I live through, and take you through those 28 seconds. For me it wasn't quite 28 seconds, it felt more like a minute 30, if I had to put a time on it.

"When the car came to a stop I opened my eyes and unclicked my seatbelt straight away. The thing I didn't remember the next day is what I did with the steering wheel as I didn't have the memory of taking it off and they said no the steering wheel's gone in between your legs, the column and everything broke and went down. So I didn't have to bother with the steering wheel.

"So I jumped out and I feel like something is touching my head, so sit back down in the car, my first thought is I'm going to wait, I'm upside down against the wall so I'll wait that someone else comes and helps me so I wasn't stressed and not aware there was fire.

"Then I looked right and left and saw on the left there is fire so 'OK I don't really have the time to wait here'. The next time I try to go up a bit more on the right, it doesn't work. I go on the left, doesn't work. I sat back down and thought about Niki Lauda, his accident, thought it couldn't end like this, it couldn't be my last race, it couldn't finish like this, no way.

"So I try again and I'm stuck, so I go back and then there's the less pleasant moment where my body start to relax, I'm in peace with myself and I'm going to die. I ask my question is it going to burn my shoe or my foot or my hand? Is it going to be painful, where's it going to start? And I mean to me that looks like 2-3-4 seconds, but I guess it was milliseconds at the time.

"Then I think about my kids, and I say 'no they cannot lose their Dad today'. So I don't know why I did what I did but I decided to turn my helmet on the left hand side and to go up like this and try and twist my shoulder. That sort of works, but then I realise my foot is stuck in the car. So I sit back down, pull as hard as I can on my left leg, the shoe stayed where my foot was but my foot come out of the shoe.

"Then I do it again and the shoulders are going through and the time the shoulder was through I know I'm going to jump out, so I've got both hands on the fire that time, I see my gloves are red normally so I see especially the left one changing colour and starting melting and going full black, I feel the pain my hands are in the fire but also I feel the relief that I am out of the car.

"Then I jump out, go on the barrier, feel Ian [Dr Roberts] pulling on my overall so I know I am not on my own anymore and there is someone with me, I land and they touch on my back so I'm like 'oh shit I am a running fireball'.

"Then I shook my hands as they're very hot and painful, removed the gloves straight away as I've got the image that the skin is like doing bubbles and melting and is going to stick to the gloves so straight away I want to remove the gloves... the skin doesn't go with it and then Ian comes to see me and speaks to me and says 'SIT DOWN!' and I gave him shit! I said 'talk to me normally please'. I guess he understood I was OK at that time, I was normal.

"Then we sit and we are too close to the fire, I hear the guys with the extinguisher say 'the battery is on fire, bring some other extinguisher', so we go into the medical car, sit down, they put some cold compress on my hand as I told them my hands are burning and my foot is broken, then the pain really starts going very high, especially on the left foot, the hands were OK at the time but the left foot starts being very painful.

"Ian explains the ambulance is coming, they're going to come with the bed and you're going to be OK and we keep talking all the time. I said 'No no we walk to the ambulance', they said 'No no the bed is coming', I said 'No no no, I walk out of the car, and say we are walking!', 'Okay we'll help you'.

"I guess on the medical side it wasn't a perfect decision but they understood for me it was key there was footage of me walking towards the ambulance, so even though I walked out of the fire I needed to send another strong message that I was OK and I was going to walk towards the ambulance.

"Then every time I met anyone I said 'Two burnt hands one broken foot!'. That's all I could say to everyone I was meeting, just because I was scared obviously of my conditions and I wanted everyone who was coming and treating me to know what my symptoms were.

"So I guess that is the full story of 28 seconds and then the rest, as you can imagine it looked longer than 28 seconds with all the thoughts I had, it must have been milliseconds but all the thoughts looked to me like 1-2-3 seconds."

Featured Image Credit: Twitter/F1

Topics: Formula One, F1, Romain Grosjean