• Alpinestars released the data from Marc Marquez’s crash at Buriram.

• It recorded a peak of 26.14G.

• Marquez would walk away and went on to win the race and championship.

There’ve been countless times in the past two years when riders walked away after suffering massive crashes. Marc Marquez crashed heavily at Buriram over the weekend, and was another saved by his Alpinestars airbag suit.

Marquez said that he had shut the throttle for Turn 7 on his out lap in FP1, causing the cold rear tyre to let go. The force of highside crash threw him high in the air before coming back down hard. He said he couldn’t breathe for five seconds immediately after. The trackside doctor even sent him to the hospital for CT scans to verify that he was indeed okay.

Imágenes de la caída de hoy, nos hemos librado de una buena! ??
Pics of the crash, luckily we could ride again!#ThaiGP
Pics by @ChangCircuit pic.twitter.com/5tVfmCOZcu

— Marc Márquez (@marcmarquez93) October 4, 2019

Alpinestars have released the crash data captured by the sensors in Marquez’s suit, just like after the crash involving Fabio Quartararo and Andrea Dovizioso at Silverstone not too long ago.

It’s immediately apparent that Marquez hit the ground at 26.16G. That’s 26.14 times the force of gravity. We’re not sure how much he weighs, but let’s assume it’s 80 kg. Thus 26.14 x 80 = 2091.2 kg. It means he hit the ground equivalent to weighing 2091.2 kg.

Remember that it’s not how one crashes, instead it’s how one stops in a crash that does the most damage.

Looking at the graph again, the sensors determined that Marquez was flying through the air, marked the spikes a fraction just before airbag deployment. The air bag inflated at 0.585 second before impact to cushion the blow.

Marc Marquez lived to see another day. In fact, he went on to post fastest times in practice and qualifying before winning the race and securing his eighth overall world title.

Kudos to the men and women who designed the technology.