MotoGP: Riders sometimes surprise airbag designers

It is confirmed that Saturday morning, during FP3 of the Argentine Grand Prix, Marc Márquez saw his leather airbag activate without any fall occurring while he was driving his Honda.

It was he himself who revealed it because it was visually limited to gestures of his left shoulder, the one operated on this winter. “The airbag went off and I spun like that. I did it in 1'38.6. You have to move to relieve the pressure and that’s why I did it”, did he declare.

It was not the first time that such an incident had happened since, last year at Sepang, it had already happened with “another Honda rider”.

Alpinestars, which provides, among other things, protections Marc Márquez et Cal Crutchlow, explained that this was due to sensor parameters set a little too sensitively, and that a very sudden movement from the driver was then sufficient to trigger the airbag. In this case, this occurred under the pressure of the wind when the pilots concerned suddenly left the shelter of the RC213V's fairing to brake at more than 300 km/h.

The settings have been adapted accordingly.

Such adjustments are completely normal in the extreme conditions that MotoGP competition provides and, in this respect, this one is absolutely irreplaceable.
It is not those who take care of the lost channel in the afternoon who will say the opposite, and all that did not prevent the Spanish driver from winning hands down... With undoubtedly in the long term beneficial repercussions for the “average biker”.