Ayao Komatsu shares the first thing Romain Grosjean said to him after his Bahrain fireball crash

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It has been more than five years since hearts were left in mouths while watching Romain Grosjean’s Haas car spear into the barriers at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix.

One of the most haunting Formula 1 scenes of the 21st century would somehow see the Frenchman walk away only with some significant burns.

By all accounts, Grosjean was dead to rights after a barrier malfunction would allow his car to pierce through the middle of it and become stuck. The halo doing its job perfectly.

Another shocking part of the scene was seeing the rear half of his Haas car completely disconnected and sitting in the track behind him. That in itself is exceptionally rare.

How much have Haas improved since Ayao Komatsu took over from Guenther Steiner?

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Fans were delighted to see the ‘hero’ Grosjean return just a few months ago in a one-off test with Haas. It was the first time since 2020 that he had got back into the cockpit of one of their cars.

Guenther Steiner told Grosjean Haas would be ‘painful’ in 2021, after telling him that his contract wouldn’t be extended. He might have been doing him a favour, since they were really poor.

READ MORE: Lewis Hamilton fans won’t be happy with what Romain Grosjean has just said about Ferrari’s driver line-up

Ayao Komatsu was stunned by Romain Grosjean’s claim that he couldn’t see fire in Bahrain crash

For anyone watching at the time, it was a horrific scene to see everything go up in flames like that. It has been decades since a similar thing happened.

Much of the time Grosjean spent in the car, he couldn’t find a way out. Only because he refused to give up did he find a tiny opening behind his head to clamber out of.

That could only happen once he disengaged his foot, stuck inside his boot, keeping him inside the burning wreckage. Somehow, he took that off and climbed over the barrier with one shoe.

Speaking to now Haas boss Ayao Komatsu about the incident after the race, Grosjean made a stunning confession.

“It’s funny when I was talking with Romain afterwards, after having seen the footage, I said to him, ‘You were so brave, going back down, to then pull your leg out,’ because you’re surrounded by fire at that stage,” he said on the High Performance Podcast.

“The interesting thing Romain said? ‘Yeah, but at that point, I wasn’t surrounded by fire.’ [Komatsu replied] ‘No, no, you were surrounded by fire.’ But interesting as a human survivor instinct, I think that completely blocks out all the fire surrounding.”

READ MORE: Romain Grosjean reveals what Ayao Komatsu privately told him about Haas 2025 line-up

What did Romain Grosjean do after leaving Formula 1 in 2020?

There aren’t many who will know what happened to Grosjean after he dropped off the grid at the end of 2020.

After taking some time to consider his options, he settled on IndyCar but refused to race on the big ovals, given the dangers of doing so.

By 2022, with Andretti, he was competing in all race events, but after just four seasons, he bowed out of the single-seater series, incredibly unfortunate to have never won a race.

He claimed pole positions, showed plenty of outright speed, but just couldn’t quite bring it together on a raceday ever.