Fernando Alonso's season-opening crash at the Australian Grand Prix peaked at 46G, a new report by the FIA's Safety Institute has found.
The McLaren driver contacted the rear of Esteban Gutierrez's Haas car, sending him flying through the air before barrel-rolling one and a half times, finally coming to a rest against the tyre wall. He managed to walk away from the crash, although he suffered a collapsed lung and a broken rib, which forced him to miss the following race in Bahrain.
New data, taken from the FIA's high-speed cameras – which are mounted on the nose of the car looking toward the driver – reveal that Alonso hit Gutierrez at 305km/h, which caused his suspension to break.
He then careered toward the wall with on-board data recorders and in-ear accelerometers recording an initial lateral deceleration of 45G as he made second contact, this time with the wall on his left.
During the barrel-roll, Alonso's head struck the headrest twice, the high-speed camera reveals, with the flip recording another high lateral deceleration of 46G. He was airborne for 0.9 seconds before finally coming to a rest against the tyre wall.
Speaking to the FIA's AUTO magazine, Laurent Mekies, the FIA Global Institute's General Manager Research, said lessons would be learned from Alonso's crash which would contribute to future improvements in safety.
"What we want to understand is the exact dynamic of the head, neck and shoulders in a high-G crash and how they interact with the other parts of the cockpit environment – the padding, the HANS, belts and anything else that can be in the space of the driver," he said.
"This camera allows us to better understand the exact forces on the head to a given displacement, the elongation of the neck, how it engages with the headrests, how the headrests perform and what we need to do to produce the next generation cockpit environment.
"It is something that will never stop as much as safety research will never stop and we will continue to push the boundaries to gain a deeper understanding."
