F1 driver Grosjean escapes after horror crash at Bahrain GP

Formula One driver Romain Grosjean appears to have escaped with burns after his car crashed and burst into flames moments after the start of the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday.

The 34-year-old French driver slid off track on the first lap and his Haas car burst into flames after being sliced in two by a barrier. Grosjean clambered out with the fire roaring behind him and his race helmet singed.

He was stuck inside the flaming wreck for nearly 10 seconds before somehow finding a way out. The race footage showed safety officials reaching the car immediately but with Grosjean still trapped inside. He managed to find a way out and jumped through the flames and gripped the boiling hot metal barrier as he jumped over back onto the track, shaking his hands in agony before being helped by the stewards.

Marshals run to extinguish Haas driver Romain Grosjean's car after an accident during the Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix in Sakhir, Bahrain, Sunday, Nov. 29, 2020. cart the Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix in Sakhir, Bahrain, Sunday, Nov. 29, 2020. (AP PhotoKamran Jebreili, Pool)

Moments later, Grosjean was shown on television chatting with the race doctor in the medical car.

Grosjean was then helped out of the car and into an ambulance. He appeared to be shaken but did not immediately seem injured other than a slight limp.

Drivers and team members stood and applauded as they saw the images of Grosjean climbing over the barrier to safety and being sprayed with a fire extinguisher.

It appeared an extraordinary escape after his car was sliced in half upon impact with the barrier.

The accident happened when Grosjean lost grip and slid to the right, where his back wheel clipped the front of Daniil Kvyat's Alpha-Tauri and he flew off into the barrier.

Grosjean's teammate Kevin Magnussen looked distressed when he saw the footage as drivers waited in the paddock for the race to restart, while officials returned to the site of the crash to pick up debris littered around the destroyed car.

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PRAGUE (AP) — Imrich Bugár, the first world champion in men’s discus and an Olympic medalist for Czechoslovakia, has died. He was 70.

His former club, Dukla, said he died Wednesday but did not disclose the cause of death.

Bugár was born in Ohrady on April 14, 1955 to a Hungarian family in what is now southern Slovakia and was a leading figure in discus in the 1980s.

He won gold at the inaugural IAAF world athletics championships in Helsinki in 1983 with a throw of 67.72 meters. That year, he cleared 70 meters at a different event and his personal best of 71.26 from 1985 still stands as the Czech record.

A silver medalist at the Moscow Olympics in 1980, he was denied the chance of another medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Games because of a boycott by the Soviet Union and its satellites behind the Iron Curtain.

Bugár learned about the decision at a training camp in California.

“I was not ready to take it,” the Dukla announcement quoted him as saying. “I was the best in the world then.”

The Soviet Union said the safety of its athletes was a reason for the move generally understood to be a revenge for the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games.

Bugár remembered he challenged the propaganda and told a communist leader that “the only thing I saw in the United States linked to the Soviet Union was an ad for the Russian vodka.” He was advised not to talk about it.

He retired in 1995.

In 2006, he denied media reports he was involved in the state-sponsored doping program under communism and that he had tested positive for anabolic steroids in secret testing before the 1987 world championship in Rome.

He finished seventh at that worlds.

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Athlete Imrich Bugar is pictured at the Sportsman of the Year results ceremony on Dec. 21, 2018, in Prague, Czech Republic. (Ondrej Deml/CTK via AP)

Athlete Imrich Bugar competes at the Golden Spike atletic meeting on June 11, 1986, in Ostrava, Czech Republic. (Petr Berger/CTK via AP)