LeClerc was very shook with the incident, It was telling reading all the drivers and team's facial expressions after this horrific incident.
I probably will run into a lot of max fanboi backlash here but i was absolutely disgusted by his cold and uninterested behaviour, especially his claim that if he was a teamleader and a driver did not want to drive after that incident, he'd boot him. absolutely a lack of respect and reasoning.
The incident shows how dangerous F1 driving still is, and many people underestimate this nowadays. Let's face it, if there was no Halo, grosjean would have lost his life right there right then. the 29th of November would have been a dark chapter in F1. And let's face it, the issue there was that there was still cause for concern.
After all, despite the fact miraculously Grosjean stepped out alive and well, which i'm still speechless about, the real concern is that his car plowed THROUGH the armco barrier. And it happened 'relatively' easy. Though it was a speedy crash, it happened during acceleration, after a corner, and you could argue it 'easily' could happen again.
The angle of that fence is a concern, and it could not be put to the back due to the 'gutter' behind it. There were no tires in front, behind, etc. to 'absorb' any impact and seemingly only was placed to 'block' the gutter. I was surprised that it was there and not taken into account beforehand.
It couldnt either simply be 'fixed' or 'adjusted', so let's face it, the risk of this repeating was present. The concrete blocks thankfully makes it impossible to 'plow through', so that did help somewhat.
So i really understand the drivers and teams concerns into racing this GP, it could be a bad omen just like that weekend in Imola. Then Stroll got flipped due to a retarded move by Kvyat.
It's an absolute miracle Grosjean was not killed in that accident.
The angle and speed of the impact itself was reason enough to be a severe accident, where wrists, legs and perhaps back vertibraes could be broken quite easily, at the very best.
Grosjean plowing literally through the fence still baffles me, and I could imagine that if the car did not snap in half, we could still have seen it turn out worse.
If it did not snap in half, it's likely that the shape of the back half would have kept grosjean's 'survival cell' INSIDE the fence, keeping grosjean caught in a blazing tornado of fire, which could have been going on even stronger and longer since the entire car's fuel tank was still connected in that scenario, not to mention the car probably would also still be combined to the batteries and as such also a electricity hazard. Grosjean would not have been able to escape being trapped inside and would, without a single doubt, have experienced severe burns, perhaps even deadly.
The poor guy would have burnt to death right there, right then, and it would have taken lots of prescious, likely life-and-death deciding time, to free him up from the wreckage and get him medical help.
if the survival cell was still 'inside' the fence, you won't be able to get that out of there swiftly, especially since you also need to concider the possiblity that you could actually make injuries worse by simply 'pulling' on the wreckage.
So had the back not have snapped off, we would very likely be looking at a (quite horrible) death.
Then it's also a miracle that with the survival cell plowing through the fence, that there was room for Grosjean to escape to begin with, and not completely upside down for example. had the car been upside down, and he would not find room to crawl out, or still even caught inside the fence, we would still be looking at a far worse outcome.
he still could have been ending up burning to death in that trap, or at the least become a very severe burn victim,
which in itself could still result in death due to infections, suffocation, or a variety of injuries sustained due to burning.
and this, all, with grosjean not having ended up with broken legs, wrist, neck, or back, preventing him to escape the car even in the same position the car was in whilst in an inferno.
The only reason Grosjean was able to come out of this crash relatively unharmed was because he was
1. Concious. 2. physically able to use his own available strenght to get out of the wreckage. 3. do it fast enough to not gain more severe burns. 4. get swift help from the medical car's team 5. the pack of marshalls and medical teams using fire extinguishers.
also, and this is something to concider too:
if the speed was higher, and he went through the fence with higher speed, he could have also ended up either crashing into that pit/gutter right behind that fence, which was RIGHT beside it. Hell, he could have even went the 'wrong' direction when escaping and could have fallen INTO that gutter.
i think there is a whole lot to be learned and still improved after this incident, and i hope that it will.
