How F1's safety advances saved Grosjean

Romain Grosjean's escape from the burning wreckage of his Haas VF-20 is nothing short of miraculous. That he was able to extricate himself, leap out of the barrier-entangled safety cell and into the arms of Alan van der Merwe and Dr Ian Roberts was a remarkable piece of luck that left all to breathe a sigh of relief.

When he drifted to the right on the exit of Turn 3, seemingly to avoid debris produced by Lando Norris' McLaren after he was sandwiched between Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, Grosjean pulled across the path of Daniil Kvyat and was turned directly into the face of the barrier. He hit the barrier with such force - recorded with a peak impact at 50g hitting the barrier at 137mph - that his car powered through it like a ballistic missile, tearing the Armco asunder.

The car broke in half owing to the shock impact, and fuel spilled everywhere as the tank seemed to rupture in the wreck with explosive results. And yet, Grosjean emerged from the ensuing flames.

Firstly, F1's gratitude must go to van der Merwe and Dr Roberts for their quick reactions, as they arrived on the scene in the medical car and tended to Grosjean in a matter of seconds. With the French driver out of immediate danger, he was sent to the Bahrain Defence Force Hospital for further checks having sustained burns and suspected broken ribs. On arrival, the prognosis was better and Grosjean had nothing broken - which is, when you consider it, even more of a miracle.

But we must also owe gratitude to the FIA's ongoing pursuit of making motorsport safer for, in this incident, the culmination of years of research and application of safety devices have saved a life. In particular, the halo head protection device has once more proved its worth, and that it parted the barrier is testament to its strength. What would have happened if F1 had never employed the halo's services doesn't bear thinking about.

Developed in response to Jules Bianchi's fatal accident in 2014 and perhaps influenced by a number of other high-profile head impacts, including those that resulted in the losses of Justin Wilson and Henry Surtees, there were plenty who felt motorsport was becoming too sanitised when the halo was first unveiled ahead of the 2018 F1 season.

And, even though it protected drivers from two high-profile incidents that year, it still drew the ire of a few unwavering critics. Tadasuke Makino, racing in F2, was left with a prominent tyre mark on his halo after a horror crash with countryman Nirei Fukuzumi at Barcelona - and Makino said after that he was "glad" to have the device. Later that year, Charles Leclerc was protected from Fernando Alonso's flying McLaren at Spa, after the Spaniard was pitched airborne by Nico Hulkenberg at the start.

Then in 2019, following its addition to the new Formula 3 car, the halo also protected Campos driver Alex Peroni at Monza after he was flipped into the barrier exiting the Parabolica. Once again in Bahrain, it proved to be a vital component on an open-wheel car. Anybody still casting aspersions on the halo's merits must seriously consider their viewpoint.

There are two front-on crash tests that the car faces - one to determine how the nose's crash structure deals with dispensing energy, and the other to test the strength of the survival cell. These crash tests are done at 15 m/s (33mph), which pales in comparison to the 137mph impact that Grosjean faced

The halo has to go through rigorous testing to ensure that it is fit for purpose on a Formula 1 car, and is made from titanium - which has the highest strength-to-density ratio of any metal. It has to face a 116kN downward and 46kN rearward force during crash tests to deal with a top-down impact, and a 93kN inward/83kN rearward test to demonstrate its effectiveness side-on. Paired with the survival cell, all of the attachment points are tested to ensure the halo doesn't rip out of the monocoque.

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Grosjean's halo faced its sternest test yet and, as the car somehow tore through the barrier, the halo had enough strength to part it and keep his head away. Back in 1974, a similar incident befell the Austrian driver Helmuth Koinigg, who at Watkins Glen crashed his Surtees into an Armco barrier - and the car, again, went straight through it. He was instantly decapitated.

Out of all the F1 safety advances over the past 50 years, the halo is the most recent addition. But the survival cell - that being the main monocoque structure - has also been beefed up in recent years. Ahead of the drivers' feet and around the sides of the survival cell, there are a number of Zylon panels to keep the driver protected too.

Unlike the other carbon bodywork, such as crash structures and the like, the survival cell is not designed to dissipate the impact - it's designed to be as tough as possible. The deformable structures mounted to the front, back and sides instead help to lessen the amount of force getting to the survival cell.

There are two front-on crash tests that the car faces - one to determine how the nose's crash structure deals with dispensing energy, and the other to test the strength of the survival cell. These crash tests are done at 15 m/s (33mph), which pales in comparison to the 137mph impact that Grosjean faced.

Yet, everything did its job; looking at the post-impact photographs of Grosjean's car (above), the survival cell held up its end of the bargain. Although charred by the flames and bearing little resemblance to the car he began the race with, the cradle containing Grosjean was left relatively unscathed. The detachment of the powertrain was alarming, and the shock was enough to break the engine and gearbox from its mountings, but if this shock was spared from the driver then we must count it as a blessing.

A key factor in Grosjean's ability to escape from the fire was retaining consciousness. Drivers being knocked out cold after an impact has happened before in F1 but, since the introduction of the HANS device in 2003, drivers have been considerably better protected against violent head movements. Developed in the US by Bob Hubbard and Jim Downing, it limits the forward acceleration of the head to prevent a driver hitting their head against a dashboard and suffering from a second- or third-impact injury. This covers everything from skull fractures to brain trauma.

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Furthermore, the padding available within the driver's headrest ensures that any side-to-side or backwards impacts are guarded against by restricting the motion of the head within the cockpit.

The almost instantaneous deceleration from 137mph to zero that Grosjean sustained, therefore, did not yield as much impact to his head as it would have in years gone by. This kept him alert, and he was able to act with as much clarity as possible with adrenaline coursing through his veins.

Further safety advances also include the addition and strengthening of wheel tethers, which keep the suspension elements tied to the car to stop wheels flying off and striking other drivers or spectators. Although Grosjean's wheels were torn off by the barriers, their breakage was delayed by the tethers and only fell off on the other side, in an area unoccupied by any grandstands.

Modern F1 cars are a wonder of engineering and the advances in safety - stemming from the first advocacy meetings among drivers, led by Sir Jackie Stewart in the 1960s - have led to a driver being saved from an impact that would have killed them in years gone by. That should be applauded.

That said, the pursuit of safer racing does not end there - and Grosjean still had to rely on luck. Had the impact happened elsewhere on the circuit, those in the medical car may not have been so quick to respond. Had Grosjean been knocked unconscious, the incident could have been far graver. You only have to look back as far as last year, when Anthoine Hubert was tragically killed in the F2 race at Spa, to see that motorsport is still not safe.

For now, the FIA and FOM will carry out an inquest into the accident and determine how the Armco buckled so easily. From there, they will decide whether Armco barriers are sufficiently safe and, if not, how they can either augment, redesign or replace them.

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The pursuit of safety in motorsport is ongoing but, without the measures that we have in place today, Romain Grosjean would not have survived his crash in Bahrain

In recent years, Tecpro barriers have been successful in absorbing large impacts - the horror crash between Jack Aitken and Luca Ghiotto in F2 at Sochi this year underlines their effectiveness in head-on collisions. Even then, the two managed to submarine underneath them.

NASCAR has also installed SAFER barriers around its circuits, which feature tubular steel guardings separated from the concrete walls by high-density foam attenuators to absorb an impact. In a discipline well-known for its crashes, the SAFER barriers have received plaudits for the way they've managed to cut the amount of serious injuries in NASCAR. Although they exist on a few F1 circuits, there's surely scope to include more of them.

The pursuit of safety in motorsport is ongoing but, without the measures that we have in place today, Romain Grosjean would not have survived his crash in Bahrain. Posting on Instagram from his hospital bed, he paid tribute to those very measures.

"Hello everyone, I just wanted to say I am OK - well, sort of OK," he said. "I wasn't for the halo some years ago, but I think it's the greatest thing that we've brought to Formula 1, and without it I wouldn't be able to speak with you today.

"So thanks to all the medical staff at the circuit, at the hospital, and hopefully I can write you quite soon some messages and tell you how it's going."

Get well soon, Romain.