I felt like I was wearing an invisible neck brace
LEWIS HAMILTON claims he has shrunk an inch. He is getting more headaches than usual. After his race in Baku, he clambered out of his Mercedes car so tentatively it looked like he may collapse like a discarded marionette.
All of this due to the effects of porpoising, the phenomenon of cars bouncing along the track that has become so brutal this season that Formula One’s governing body have stepped in to try to fix it.
Hamilton revealed the vicious jarring puts 10G of force — 10 times the force of gravity — up and down his back.
The Mail on Sunday visited Silverstone this week to experience the impact of g-force on the body.
Sat on a weights bench inside the Porsche Human Performance lab, this aching, sweaty reporter had a harness strapped to his head while a sports scientist pulled on its elastic cords to increase the force pulsing through my neck as I tried to stop my head flinging to the other side of the room.
By the next morning, it did not matter which way my neck moved. Any position other than perfectly still, head up, eyes straight ahead and the muscles stiffened, clenched towards the shoulders like angry fists. It was like wearing an invisible neck brace.
And we only reached 4G. The maximum g-force that F1 drivers usually endure is 6G, six times the weight of your head and helmet.
Imagine, for a moment your head is no longer your head but actually an overweight Labrador called Charlie, who darts after balls in any direction and your neck must now support all of 80 pounds of his weight. Our 4G force was roughly the weight of a Border Collie.
The forces going up and down Hamilton’s back are 10G. George Russell said recently it was ‘only a matter of time’ before porpoising caused a major accident. The FIA, motor racing’s governing body, are now changing regulations due to concerns over driver safety. ‘Conyear, centration has to be 100 per cent,’ says Jack Wilson, sports scientist at Porsche Human Performance.
‘If you throw in severe back pain on top of other stresses an F1 driver contends with, that will be eating away at the back of your mind. It’s another layer of difficulty.
‘What can be done to help? You could say, we’ll try to make drivers strong and robust but when you’re going at that level of g-force, at that frequency, it’s difficult to make your driver bulletproof.’
As part of The Mail on Sunday’s visit, courtesy of Precision Fuel and Hydration, we endured the same fitness tests as F1 drivers. Most of us have, at some point questioned from the comfort of our own sofa, how hard it can be.
Even by the first test of the day, simply standing on cold metal plates of a body analysis machine, the difference between drivers and doubters was clear. Their body fat percentage is around eight per cent. Mine was 26, the same as a lean pork sausage.
My hand grip generated 30 pounds less than the average F1 driver despite weighing three-anda-half stone more. Their necks can withstand three times the force.
Stood in front of a Batak machine, a board of 12 lights that you whack when they flash up at random, I was pleased with my score of 84 in a minute — F1 drivers exceed 120.
Running on a treadmill until I nearly fell off, my lungs took on 40ml of oxygen per minute per kilo of weight. They often reach double that. Not to mention heat. The cockpit temperature usually exceeds 45 degrees. To simulate this, we stepped into a heat chamber on to a treadmill at 45 degrees.
It hit you as though you had just stepped off a plane. A 10-minute jog was more than enough. Hamilton can lose more than three litres of sweat over a race. F1 drivers, it is clear, put their bodies through immense pressures. My neck, for one, is pleased to be able just to watch from the sofa.