Munich – In an emotional interview, former Formula 1 driver Romain Grosjean recalled his horrific accident at the Bahrain Grand Prix in 2020.

When the Frenchman landed at that time in the first lap with his Haas car and about 220 km/h in the guardrail, it caught fire. The 36-year-old racing driver was stuck in the burning car for 27 seconds and even saved himself in the end.

Grosjean stuck with shoe

At first, it seemed like there was no way out. “I was trapped between the guardrail and the headrest with my helmet. When I tried to get out, it just didn’t work. So I tried up, I tried right, and I tried left. In vain!” said the Frenchman, who now lives in the USA and competes as a racing driver in the IndyCar series, to “Sport Bild.

Then Grosjean did find a way to escape the fire. “The last thing I did was to grip my halo tightly with both hands and pull myself up with all my might to break the headrest. Then I found that my foot was stuck. So I had to go back to pull my foot out. That’s when my shoe got stuck. That’s how I was able to free myself in the end,” explained Grosjean, who burned the outer surfaces of his hands in the process.

Grosjean: “That was incredible”.

The insides, on the other hand, were spared – as were his feet. “Incredibly, I didn’t even have a blister or anything on my foot afterwards. Crazy!” Even he looked at the accident “a couple of times.”

The strength to escape from the car would have given him his children: “My children saved my life! […] Because when I thought, this is the end, my life is over, I had to think of them. I had to find a solution for them to escape. It didn’t look good for me at that moment.”

Grosjean worked with psychologists

Despite the shock, Grosjean did not comply with his children’s wish to stop racing after the accident. “I explained to them that it’s a big part of my life,” the 36-year-old justified himself.

The fact that Grosjean is able to speak so openly about the tragic accident also has to do with his psychologist. “We had two hard sessions via Skype. One on Tuesday and one on Friday or Saturday right after the crash. After that, I never had another flashback or nightmare. I can talk about it, I can look at the scene,” the Frenchman told us.

Grosjean on flames: “Like in Call of Duty”.

Despite the near-death experience, Grosjean was in an unusual emotional state in the flamestorm. He said he felt “peaceful and relaxed.” “However, it wasn’t my life passing by like a movie in front of my inner eye,” Grosjean described, “it was more like in the computer game “Call of Duty” when the gas comes at you. It came closer and closer and closer. That’s how the moment felt to me in the face of death.”

November 29 has been a holiday for the race car driver and family man ever since. “I get a cake. It’s a good reason to get a cake,” Grosjean said. He also said he took away one more important lesson from the horror crash: “Never give up – we often say that so easily. But that sums it up best!”

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