During the Bahrain Grand Prix, Romain Grosjean’s fireball crash caused him serious burns in his hands. However, looking in retrospect, Romain got lucky and escaped in a gruesome scene. Due to the burns in his hands, F1 reviewed the type of gloves worn by the racers and has now come with a more fire-resistant method.
The engineers who worked on the gloves gave them multiple layers of protective gear. Meanwhile, the gloves have also become more fire-resistant by curbing the amount of heat transferred to the hand. F1 tested the gloves in a practice session in Turkey.
As a result of Romain’s incident, it was an area we started working on immediately. We identified very quickly that was an area that could be improved, together with the manufacturers. The initial feedback from the drivers is all good. There’s a couple of little fine-tuning elements with a couple of the brands, but nothing insurmountable from that end. So we’re very grateful to the drivers and the teams involved to actually run them and it shows that we’re trying to increase those levels of protection as much as possible.
Michael Masi, Director, F1