Rennie Scaysbrook | September 4, 2019
Alpinestars has published the data taken from the massive Andrea Dovizioso/Fabio Quartararo crash at turn one of the recent British MotoGP round at Silverstone.
In case you haven’t seen it, Quartararo had to abruptly shut the throttle on his Petronas-Sprinta Yamaha to avoid a sliding Alex Rins’ Suzuki, and when he cracked the gas open once more, his traction control system did not kick in, sending the young Frenchman way over the highside.
That was bad news for the approaching Andrea Dovizioso on the factory Ducati, who plowed into the Frenchman’s stricken Yamaha and was himself launched into orbit, coming down even harder than Quartararo.
It looked bad and it was, with Dovi not moving for a few minutes but eventually getting to his feet. He was later transferred to hospital for checks that included memory loss but was released from the hospital that night to fly back to Italy.
Quartararo’s impact was big, but not as big as Dovizioso’s.
Quartararo was also transported to the hospital for preliminary checks but was also released that day.
Both riders were wearing Alpinestars Tech-Air airbag system in their leathers, and the Italian company has now made public the data recorded in the crash.
Fabio Quartararo’s crash lasted 4.7 seconds, with his airbag fully inflating 60 milliseconds before he hit the tarmac.
Quartararo’s crash was violent but shorter than Dovi’s.
For Dovizioso, his crash lasted 4.8 seconds but he tumbled much more and further than Quartararo due to the speed at which he hit the Yamaha, as can be seen from the repeated pink line spikes in his graph.
Dovi’s suit inflated 150 milliseconds before the first impact with the ground, but what’s interesting is the airbag did not inflate when Dovi initially slammed into the Yamaha. It was only when he was launched from the Ducati that the airbag inflated.
The Alpinestars Tech-Air system has been in use for a decade now in MotoGP and in that time, Alpinestars has constantly evolved the algorithm to recognize the type of crash that’s happening before the rider hits the ground.
Check out the initial impact (in blue) of Dovi’s crash, over 35 G’s!
That’s why a rider who suffers a low-side crash at slow speed will sometimes not have their airbag inflated after they hit the ground, while a rider who suffers a highside, in the case of Quartararo but also Dovizioso, will have their airbag inflated before their initial impact with the ground.
In any case, this was no doubt an absolutely monster crash that could have had very serious consequences for both riders, and no doubt the airbag system played a huge role in reducing the injuries suffered by both Andrea Dovizioso and Fabio Quartararo. Both riders were back at the Misano test riding, less than two weeks later, with Quartararo posting the fastest time and Dovizioso still a little sore in 16th.
We have been wearing the A’stars Tech-Air airbag system for a few years now at Cycle News, and luckily we have not tested it in the wild, but we did test it Alpinestars’ U.S. HQ a few years back, and you can view that video below.
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