Two hundred and thirty-three kilometres an hour. That is how fast Charles Leclerc's Ferrari was going when he lost control on the third lap of the race at Monza and hit the barrier. The driver got out of the car by himself, on his own two feet, and then went through the standard medical protocol. That is the part everyone saw.

The part not carried in the live broadcast was happening in the paddock. Alexandra, his wife, was standing there in a red dress in the team's colour, well into her pregnancy with their first child. How long thirty seconds without information last when the man you are watching hit a wall is the father of the child you are carrying - no timing device in Formula 1 measures that.

Monza is not an ordinary circuit. It is the fastest on the calendar, a track opened in 1922, built around long straights where the cars spend most of the lap flat out. Every year there is talk of safety upgrades, every year something is added, and every year somebody goes into the barrier at a speed at which a car stops being a car.

Leclerc is 28, Alexandra 24. They married in a civil ceremony on 28 February this year, after three years together. They kept the pregnancy to themselves until it became visible at the race in Hungary in late July - which, in a sport where the cameras point at the paddock as much as at the track, is a small victory for privacy. The church ceremony has been postponed to next year, after the birth.

Ferrari, like any team, will analyse the impact, pull the telemetry data and announce that everything worked as it should. It probably did. But there is a difference between "the system did its job" and "the man walked away because he was lucky" - and that difference rarely makes it into official reports.

Alexandra went back to the hotel with her husband that same evening. Next weekend she will sit in the same paddock again, at another circuit, and watch again. In that sport, this is the normal.