Grosjean hit the barrier at 137mph and the impact measured a force of 53G. He was in the inferno for nearly 30 seconds before extracting himself and then being helped over the barrier by FIA doctor Ian Roberts, who had just arrived in the medical car, run towards the flames, and helped a marshal set off a fire extinguisher before going to the driver's aid.
The last time an F1 car split in two was at Monaco in 1991. The last time one caught fire in a crash was at Imola in 1989. And you have to go back to the 1970s to find accidents in which cars pierced barriers in such a way. On both occasions, at Watkins Glen in the USA in 1973 and 1974, the drivers, Francois Cevert and Helmut Koinigg, were killed.
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On one level, then, this was a very positive day for F1.
As Horner put it: "The car has gone through the barrier. He has survived that impact. The car, the safety cell, the halo, the fireproof overalls, the belts, the Hans system, the extraction, the FIA crew being there within seconds, the guys fearlessly going in to extract him from the car. Of course you're always going to learn but I would say that's the biggest result of the day."
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There remain worrying aspects to the accident.
Firstly, the barrier itself, and how the car managed to penetrate it.
"The angle must have been so precise," Wolff said, "like a knife going tough the barrier. I didn't think modern barriers could split like this, and we need to analyse how this could happen."
Was this a failure of the barrier? Was it a function of the design of the front of an F1 car if it hit a barrier in such a way that was previously unknown?
Secondly, what happened to create the fire? The conflagration, though large, does not seem to have been big enough for it to have been the entire 100kg fuel load in the car.
So was it a broken fuel line? Was it a compression of the tank forcing a relatively small amount of fuel out of the filler?
And wrapped up in the issue of the fire is why the car came apart in the way it did. As Wolff said: "The car breaking shouldn't happen - the rear should break off with the engine and not the engine staying on the chassis."
