This time, it wasn’t the famous Mr. Smile, the man with the eternal smile. No, it was rather a man deeply “disappointed and disgusted” who appeared before the media this Sunday after the Bahrain Grand Prix. An anger following F1’s decision to repeatedly broadcast the images of Romain Grosjean’s extraordinary crash: \u00ab I’m disgusted and disappointed by F1 for having shown or chosen to show the images in this way, multiplying the replays of the fire, of his car cut in two. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, they show his onboard camera. \u00bb It should be noted, however, that Liberty Media respected its own procedure, which is not to show images of the accident until the immediate health condition of the driver is known. But indeed, once this first step was completed, they didn’t hesitate to show all angles of the accident.<\/p>\n
What the Australian criticizes about Liberty Media is that they do not take into account the psychology of the drivers, who are going back into the ring shortly after one of their own suffered a horrific accident: \u00ab Why do we need to see that? We’re going back out in an hour. His family had to watch that. All of our families had to watch that. You don’t care about anyone’s emotions. It’s really unfair. This is not entertainment. It was very, very poorly handled. It looked like a game and it wasn’t. \u00bb Thus, Sebastian Vettel also mentioned that he chose not to watch the footage of the accident before getting back into his car.<\/p>\n
The comment from the two drivers is thus in line with the statements of Kelly McNish, the wife of former driver Allan: \u00ab Happy that Allan was not at home. We did not watch Romain Grosjean’s crash live. I only watched once I saw he was safe. Courage to Romain’s wife (and family). I think she will also need a process to rebuild. \u00bb<\/p>\n
The Renault driver believes that it would have been better not to show all those images to fill the interruption before the race resumed and to reserve them for the next day when all the consequences of the accident on the driver’s health were known: \u00ab We are lucky he’s still here, but it could have been a whole different story. Showing it like it’s Hollywood is not cool. Do that tomorrow, but not today. \u00bb<\/p>\n
In such a context, one might wonder whether to laugh or cry at Laurent Delahousse’s slip at the opening of the France 2 news, where he managed to confuse S\u00e9bastien Grosjean (the tennis player retired since 2010) with Romain Grosjean…<\/p>\n
\nA heart-stopping moment on Lap 1 in Bahrain<\/p>\n
We are all incredibly grateful that @RGrosjean<\/a> walked away from this incident#BahrainGP<\/a> ???????? #F1<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/6ZztuxOLhw<\/a><\/p>\n