Marc Marquez would almost certainly like to forget this past weekend at Mugello for the Italian GP. Heads up to the spoiler alert, but not only did he make an unforced error during the race, crashing out of second place all by his lonesome (with a comfortable margin fore and aft, we might add), but the young Spanish rider also had one of the fastest crashes ever in the MotoGP Championship during Friday’s Free Practice 2 session.
Losing control of his Repsol Honda RC213V at 209.9 mph as he approached the San Donato corner during the race, Marquez had to jump away from his race bike, at roughly 170 mph, in order to avoid the rapidly approaching wall barrier. Escaping with a battered chin, a small fissure to his humerus bone, as well as minor soft-tissue injuries to his shoulder, Marquez came out of the incident in FP2 rather well, all things considered.
Now that Marquez has gotten a clean bill of health from doctors in Barcelona (he will have to undergo some physio the next few days though), Repsol and others in the paddock can breathe a sigh of relief, and begin to analyze the crash in more detail. Helping add insight to the crash, Alpinestars has released the telemetry from Marquez’s Tech Air race suit, which shows the g-forces involved during the crash, as well as the deployment time of the suit’s airbag.
Perhaps the most intriguing pieces of data is that both Marquez’s left and right shoulders maxed-out the suits accelerometers limit of 25g’s, though interestingly at different times of the crash, indicating his roll during the impact.
With the crash lasting 4.25 seconds, it took the airbag’s computer only 0.08 seconds to detect the crash, and another 0.05 seconds to delpoy the airbag. This gave Marquez’s body a 0.03 second margin between airbag deployment and his first impact with the ground. Impressive stuff, and certainly riders with a non-airbag equipped suit would have suffered greater injuries. By the numbers, Alpinstars highlights the crash as follows:
- Speed at time of loss of control: 337.9 Km/H (209.9 Mph)
- First impact with ground: 0.080 seconds after crash detection
- First impact with ground: 0.030 seconds after full airbag inflation (airbags inflated in 0.050 seconds)
- Maximum (recorded) energy in crash: 25g (the Tech Air system accelerometers maximum energy recording capability)
- Duration of significant data during the accident: 4.250 seconds
Source: Alpinestars
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