It is the story of a miracle worker who almost lost everything in a few seconds. When he takes the start of the Bahrain Grand Prix in November 2020, Romain Grosjean is enjoying his last races in Formula 1 since knowing he will not have a seat for next year. After a collision, he violently collides with the wall and passes a few centimeters from certain death. Now fully recovered after a last surgery on his bruised hand, the 35-year-old pilot is pulling out a book, Death in the face, where he recounts this milestone event.
He also talks about his family life, his wife, the former journalist Marion Jollès, with whom he had three children, Sacha (born in July 2013), Simon (born in May 2015) and Camille (born in December 2017). A family life that could well have been quite different if Romain Grosjean had listened to the advice of one of his bosses, as he told it for Le Figaro. The pilot now based in the United States remembers what his boss said after his marriage in 2012: “You have to prove to the team that you have a 100% lead in your job. That there is nothing else that matters. So avoid launching into the creation of a family with kids and all the hoopla eh! “.
Astonishing remarks, but especially unwelcome at the time since Marion is already pregnant with their first child. Romain Grosjean has no other choice but to announce it to his team and, far from sharing his enthusiasm, his boss “will go into black anger”. But obviously this warning and the bloodstroke that followed did not move the Franco-Swiss athlete more than that, who subsequently had two other children. An astonishing anecdote, which shows that it is sometimes difficult to combine a professional sporting life with a fulfilled family life.