© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
Lewis Hamilton gives his comments on Romain Grosjean’s “horrifying” crash and a “physically very demanding” Bahrain Grand Prix.
Grosjean’s contact with Daniil Kvyat on lap 1 of the Bahrain Grand Prix resulted in a crash that tore his car in two, before it burst into flames. Thankfully the French driver managed to leave the fiery wreckage after 18 seconds with only minor injuries. After the race Lewis Hamilton gave his comments on the shocking incident.
“It was such a shocking image to see,” said the Briton.
“When I get in the car, I know that I’m taking risk, and I respect the dangers that are in this sport. I posted about it [on social media] whilst I was in that break because it’s horrifying.
“The cockpit, I don’t know what Gs he pulled, but I’m just so grateful that the halo worked. I’m grateful the barrier didn’t slice his head off or something like that. It could have been so much worse.
“It’s a reminder to us, and hopefully to the people that are watching, that this is a dangerous sport. We are out there pushing to the limit and that limit, it needs to be respected.
“I think it shows an amazing job that F1 has done the FIA have done over time, to be able to walk away from something like that.
“But of course, that will be investigated and they will do a lot of work to try and make sure that that doesn’t happen again.”
If you like SilverArrows.Net, consider supporting us by buying us a coffee!
The crash also led to a red flag and the race was restarted after more than an hour. Ultimately Hamilton managed to win the grand prix, but he acknowledges it was not easy to regain the right mindset on race restart.
“It really was physically very demanding,” the Briton explained.
“With the break that we had at the beginning, you get into a mindset, you go out and you get a good start, and then that hour wait that we had, it so easy to step out of the zone.
“That was quite tricky, but then getting back in, [Red Bull] had a lot of speed today so I was flat out the whole way, trying to try to keep them at bay.
“This track has always been physical we got lots of high speed corners. So I was definitely feeling it.
“I managed to just about reply to [Verstappen] when I needed to, but it was sliding around a lot out there and I wasn’t really quite sure how it would play out at the end.
“But I’m massively grateful and thankful to my team, because they at the end of the day did a great job with the strategy,” concluded the seven-time champion.
