Rennie Scaysbrook | April 23, 2017
The World Champion brings us into the world of Tech Air
Marquez (left) with Alpinestars’ Jeremy Appleton. The Spanish legend will not race without an airbag system.
In a special presentation at the Alpinestars hospitality event at Circuit of The Americas on Friday for the 2017 Red Bull Grand Prix of The Americas, three-time MotoGP World Champion Marc Marquez made an appearance to have a quick chat with the assembled media about the latest innovation in rider safety, the Alpinestars Tech Air Race airbag system.
Developed in conjunction with MotoGP riders for over a decade, the Tech Air system is now at the point where it’s on sale to the public this coming August, and it is a system we at Cycle News have been testing for the past few months at selected new bike launches.
The Tech Air system relies on no electronic chords or GPS to deploy. It’s a unit completely contained within the back protector, and Marquez himself has been part of the development team since he started in the world championships back in 2009. He has seen the system develop to the point where he vehemently will not head onto the track without it.
“In the beginning, it was a little bit strange to wear because you can feel it,” says Marquez. “But then the next year they (Alpinestars) improved a lot, and now we cannot feel (the airbag).
During Marquez’s ra e crash in Argentina this season, the suit measured a force of over 19g!
“Okay, you got a little bit of the weight, but on the bike, it’s impossible to feel. You feel really, really good, really safe, and now if you told me go on track without the airbag, I will say no. It’s something that gives you have great confidence because in highside crashes, always it’s much better than without. I have a lot of problems with the shoulders. I dislocate them many, many times. Then, with the airbag, the impact protects me much more. This also saves many, many injuries.”
“In terms of performance, we’ve also steadily improved both the algorithm performance and the deployment of the airbag,” says Alpinestars Communication Manager, Jeremy Appleton. “Right now, in a low-side situation, given the sensors are sending data to the electronic process every two milliseconds, that data is being processed extremely rapidly. It’s taking us anywhere from 8 to 12 milliseconds to detect a loss of control that leads potentially to a serious impact. Then we’re able to deploy the airbag in no more than 40 milliseconds. So, potentially, within 50 milliseconds, we are deploying to full pressure a complete body protection system, which in a low-side accident typically can be 60-80 milliseconds, we’ve got the protection in place before the rider hits the ground.”
The Tech Air system has two charges, enabling the rider to get back on board and complete the race with one more charge left in the tanks after a crash.
“It’s important,” says Marquez, “and sometimes when we have the bike in the garage but sometimes you crash, you go in the garage and you take the second bike and you know that the bike’s okay. But after 20, 30 seconds, you know that you are riding safe again with the airbag.”
The Tech Air system relies on no electronic chords or GPS, instead containing everything in the back protector.
For us consumers, Tech Air’s benefits will be huge for street riding. The Tech Air system has algorithms for street and race, and important point because a street crash is fundamentally different to a race crash. Street crashes are impact-based, i.e a car rear-ending you, versus the loss of control-based crash you normally encounter in a race, i.e losing the front.
“For our customer system, which is directly related to what we’re using in MotoGP, you also have the ability to switch the algorithm from a race setting to a street setting,” says Jeremy Appleton. “The beauty of that is if you use your leather suit to ride your motorcycle from home to a track day, you can use the system in street mode, so the system is fully capable of detecting an impact on the street. Connect it, reconfigure it for the track, and use it all day as a race suit.
“The biggest thing about that is if you’re at a stop sign and you get hit from behind, the street system is going to react and stay ready. But if it’s in race mode and you stopped, it will go to standby so it wouldn’t react—that’s why the street algorithm works a little bit differently to understand the situations.”
Check out our video here for what happens when we deploy our airbag system at Alpinestars HQ in California!
