A camera watches as a French driver thanks a Bahraini stranger for saving his life. "You were the man that crossed the road?" he asks and then wraps his bandaged hands in gratitude around a masked volunteer. Romain Grosjean is meeting Ali Taher four days after the marshal with his extinguisher helped rescue him from a burning car.

Both men were doing their duty before disaster connected them. One a driver, the other a marshal. One famous, the other unknown. Both without whom sport cannot function. One the heart, the other the backbone.