The safety of Formula 1 cars and circuits has undoubtedly been one of the points on which the FIA has focused its attention in the last twenty years.
I remember times when the F1 cars were very different, and less safe, and the drivers, who were probably less trained and prepared than the current ones, approached the races with less safety measures.
The HANS, for example, represented a great advance, and since 2003 it has offered greater safety for the drivers, avoiding in the event of a violent impact of the car, serious cranial-cervical alterations linked to the inertia of the impact forwards, upwards and to the sides. sides.
I believe that since then, post- traumatic injuries in pilots have decreased by at least 90%. Brain injuries, unfortunately, are always dependent on the impact force of an accident, and serious and life-threatening injuries often occur when the inertial force exerted on the driver’s head and neck exceeds 50G in a collision with a car. .
Mick Schumacher, Haas VF-22, after his crash at the Monaco GP
But everything also depends on the angle of these forces, and the time they are exerted on the head: theoretically, the skull could resist up to 90G, if a single direction of force is considered and for a few hundredths of a second.
In reality, things are different, because the forces that cause trauma are multidirectional, the brain and vascular structures inside the skull do not have the density of bone, and you also have to take into account the weight of the pilot’s own helmet in the generation of the inertial force.
In the past, anesthetist colleagues (Dr. Domenico Salcito and colleagues) studied the effects of accidental head and neck trauma in F1 drivers in the 1980s, and found no post-traumatic vascular changes.
However, the vertebral alterations in the neck were important and generated painful discomfort for the pilots in the long term. I remember that in 1987, in Imola, Nelson Piquet had a terrible accident in training. He was hospitalized in Bellaria, and no cerebral alterations were found in the CT scan, but the cervical X-ray of the Brazilian, who was 35 years old at the time, showed signs of early and very pronounced traumatic vertebral-discal alterations for his age.
The introduction of the Halo in modern single-seaters has taken driver safety to a very high level. However, even in modern F1, neck and head strains for drivers, subjected to ever-increasing speeds, are a constant phenomenon.
But to fully understand the physical consequences of vibrations and inertial forces on the driver during driving, it is necessary to briefly recall the current position of F1 drivers in their seats.
The neck remains flexed forward, towards the chest, which is very high because the dorso-lumbar part of the pilot’s spine is practically extended, with final support in the lumbosacral part, which acts as a support point for the lower limbs, raised from the pelvis and extended forward with a slight bend in the knees. The feet, which press on the accelerator to the right and the brake to the left, remain at chest height.
Preparation of Lewis Hamilton’s seat, you can see the position he adopts
The seat belts immobilize the pilot in this position and fix him to the seat, with the upper extremities flexed about 45 degrees and located along the chest, to have the hands on the steering wheel, which is at the height of the driver’s chin .
Taking this position into account, it is easy to understand why the muscular tensions of the pilots during driving are mainly concentrated in the cervical-thoracic area.
Los nuevos neumáticos de 18 pulgadas
With the arrival of the new FIA regulations for the 2022 season, cars and tires have changed drastically in certain aspects related to aerodynamics and damping, due to the 18″ tyres.
The most important aerodynamic effect is, as we know, that of a car that tends to sink due to the forced suction generated by the air transported under the car.
Since the first pre-season tests, drivers have experienced the phenomenon of cars “jumping” at full speed due to temporary loss of downforce, once the downforce linked to the suction of air under the car had exhausted the space allowed by the suspension and underbody, generating a temporary lifting of the car, which immediately resumed the suction effect
Valtteri Bottas, Alfa Romeo C42
This type of aerodynamic pumping has been called ‘porpoising’, due to the similarity of the up and down movement of the waves that dolphins have in the water [‘porpoise’ means porpoise in English, which are animals similar to dolphins].
Seeing on TV the drivers’ helmets going up and down the straights, much more pronouncedly than in years past, was one of the first things that discerning F1 fans and connoisseurs noticed.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes-AMG, painful at the climb of the W13
But can this ‘jump’ condition be tolerated for long by drivers throughout a sporting event? The answer is no. Although today’s drivers are athletes trained to the fatigue of F1 driving, and are supported by effective safety devices such as HANS and around-the-helmet protectors, it is clear that the continual up-and-down vibrations generated by porpoising tend to tire the muscular apparatus of the pilots’ neck and shoulders, earlier and more than was the case until 2021.
In addition, porpoising has been associated more recently with the phenomenon of ‘bottoming’, that is, the friction of the splitter and the bottom, again caused by aerodynamic suction, but with the consequence of increasing the impact on the neck and the area back-lumbar of the driver, generated by the anomalous movement of ‘up and down’ of the car.
It is easy to hear on television, from the on board images, the noise of the friction suffered by the F1, while in the external images it is clear to everyone that the sparks generated by the friction of the car at full speed and with maximum downforce effect, are greatly increased.
In these conditions, the driver is continually subjected to forces that oppose each other, causing a violent decrease in height, a crash of the car and a temporary reaction of the same rise.
At the level of the cervical spine, the muscles are subjected to greater tension, eventually generating irritation in the nerves that run through them. Specifically: from C1 to C4 there are nerves that come out of the vertebrae and go to the muscles of the neck, and also to the back of the head, and behind the ears. Nerve irritation already generates by itself an increase in muscle tone, which in turn increases nerve irritation.
All this gives rise to a neuralgia that remains with the pilot after the sporting event, and that is represented by neck pain, retroauricular pain and that, sometimes, also extends to the side of the face.
To these symptomatic changes in the neck must be added the pressure that these jumps exert on the seat belts on the shoulders. In particular, very tight belts strain the region of the trapezius muscles with jumps, generating local pain, but often also spreading to the chest region and towards the shoulder blades. In fact, the accessory nerve runs through the trapezius muscles, which can become inflamed and sometimes even cause temporary paralysis of the muscle itself.
I remember back in the days when drivers weren’t using the HANS yet, in 1993 I had the opportunity to meet the great Alex Zanardi at the Bellaria hospital, who had suffered a terrible accident in practice for the Belgian GP.
Fortunately, he only suffered contusions, and a temporary paralysis of the accessory nerves (and therefore of the trapezius muscles) due to the violent recoil caused by the seat belts on the pilot’s shoulders.
However, the phenomenon of seat belt compression after a frontal impact has been greatly reduced thanks to the introduction of the HANS collar. Today, drivers, after an accident in which the 15G deceleration signal on the car is exceeded, must undergo a medical examination.
I remember at the 2021 Imola GP I spoke to Latifi, Russell and Bottas, and they all complained of bearable pain in their shoulders and chest, but with no neurological consequences.
George Russell, Mercedes W13
In 2022, unfortunately, porpoising and bottoming tensions start to be annoying for drivers, as they complain about them constantly, even without accidents, almost as much as when they had a car accident in 2021.
I spoke to Russell this year, during the Emilia Romagna GP, and he confirmed this constant discomfort with concern. From a medical point of view, there are also other possible secondary effects of belt compression caused by porpoising and rubbing the track against the bottom: the pilot could develop irritation of the roots of the brachial plexus, since the constant pressure alternated with crushing in the supraclavicular region could irritate this nerve structure.
The brachial plexus is a set of nerve trunks that leave the cervical vertebrae from C5 to C7, and give rise to the nerves of the upper extremities. Therefore, it is not uncommon to hear some pilots also complain of discomfort along the arms, especially in the territories of the radial and axillary nerves (back of the arm and shoulder), or the musculocutaneous nerve (front of the shoulder). arm), along with irritation of nerve branches directed to the superolateral part of the chest or the suprascapular part of the shoulder.
Details of the plano background of the Ferrari F1-75
In addition, bottoming out aggravates car bouncing discomfort by amplifying this muscular discomfort into the middle and lower back. Therefore, pilots may also complain of pain in these regions.
For this reason, I think the drivers need even more physiotherapy support this year, before and especially after their driving sessions. But car bouncing can also cause visual problems.
Impaired vision , coupled with sore neck muscles, could lead to increased driver fatigue during a race. Greater fatigue means lower performance and, above all, a lower state of alertness, with a higher risk of accidents.
Therefore, I believe that if the current cars do not have a solution to porpoising and bottoming through some change in the regulations, or some magic of the teams’ engineers, the direct physical risk for the drivers and the risk of accidents can increase.
Dr. Nicola Acciarri
