Romain Grosjean receives family blessing to continue racing

Romain Grosjean

Grosjean receives family blessing to continue racing

Grosjean will compete in IndyCar this season having left Formula 1 at the end of 2020

Ewan Gale

Tuesday 16 February 2021 12:34

Romain Grosjean has said he has the full support of his family to continue racing after his terrifying crash in Bahrain last year.

Grosjean miraculously escaped from a fiery crash at the Bahrain Grand Prix with only burns to his hands. The accident cut short his Formula 1 career, the Frenchman out of contract with Haas at the end of 2020, but did nothing to dampen his ambition to continue racing.

In early February, Grosjean confirmed he had signed a deal to contest the road course events on the IndyCar calendar with Dale Coyne Racing.

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Ahead of his return to a race car in a test at Barber Motorsports Park on February 22, Grosjean revealed he has the full blessing of his family to continue racing.

"For the kids and my wife, they understand I am a racer at heart and that’s what I really love doing," he explained.

"One day, I will be done with motorsport but it is not quite yet. I still have the wish to go racing.

"The kids, I got them involved quite a fair bit into the helmet design and choosing the number and so on. They were very happy. The other day, I was training my neck on the sofa with a very heavy Bell helmet, 7.5 kilograms or so.

"My oldest son came and said ‘Daddy, you are training your neck, I am happy’. It was a small sentence for him but it meant a lot for me just because he was happy that I was training to go racing again.”

Grosjean's Bahrain crash was one of the most shocking seen in F1 in recent years, with his escape a tribute to the continued push for improved safety measures.

But despite the severity of the incident, Grosjean has insisted retiring was never an option.

“I asked myself the question and I think deep in my head, it was never an option," he continued.

"But you can imagine a lot of people around me would push me to stop racing. But it was never an option in my head. I just felt like I wanted to go back racing.”