Silverstone, 2017, second practice. Sebastian Vettel turns into Maggots, the first of the esses that lead to Becketts, and the telemetry reads 6.1 g: for a moment his body weighs six times what it does standing up, and all of that weight pushes sideways. That is F1 g force, the thing nobody sees from the sofa and every driver feels in every corner, in every braking zone, for an hour and a half.

To tell its story you need one unit of measurement, the g, and a few well-chosen numbers. The corners do the rest.

What pulling 5 g actually means

One g is the acceleration due to gravity, the thing that keeps us glued to the floor. When a car changes direction or speed, the driver is subjected to accelerations expressed as multiples of that value: at 5 g the body is pushed with a force equal to five times its own weight. Mercedes did the sum for George Russell, who weighs around 70 kg: through Turn 1 at Suzuka, at more than 5 g, a force of about 350 kg acts on his body.

The part that suffers most is the neck. Head and helmet together weigh around 7 kg, and at 5 g those 7 kg become 35, to be held upright while the car tries to carry them out of the corner. It is no surprise that drivers’ necks look the way they do, and that is why neck training sits at the centre of every driver’s preparation.

Where it is felt: corners, braking, kerbs

Lateral force is the best known, because it belongs to the fast corners. According to Mercedes, the peak of the 2024 calendar was Turn 1 at Suzuka, at more than 5 g, and sequences such as Maggots and Becketts at Silverstone or Eau Rouge at Spa reach similar values.

Then there is braking, which is longitudinal and arrives all at once. At the first chicane at Monza, according to Brembo data, cars up to 2025 went from 337 to 89 km/h and the driver was thrown forward against the belts with a deceleration of around 5 g. Under acceleration the values are much lower, around 1-1.5 g: the drive goes through the rear wheels only, which at low speed spin before they can use all the power, while under braking all four wheels work, and so does air resistance. And then there are the vertical loads from kerbs and bumps, which never make the news but are repeated for sixty laps.

The driver’s body, one muscle at a time

A Formula 1 driver takes these loads without the anti-g suit that fighter pilots wear, and for the whole length of a race. Neck work is the most visible part (elastic bands, weighted helmets, harnesses that pull the head sideways), but it is not enough: shoulders, core and legs are needed to stay still in the seat and to brake precisely while the body is being thrown forward.

Breathing matters too. Under loads this high it becomes harder work, and mental fatigue piles on top of the physical kind, because at 300 km/h every decision has to be taken at exactly the right moment. That is why today’s drivers train like endurance athletes, and why the loss of sharpness in the closing laps is often a matter of preparation rather than talent. In their hands, meanwhile, they hold one of the most complex objects on the car: a steering wheel worth tens of thousands of dollars that has to be operated by feel precisely while the body is under load.

When g becomes an accident

Race values are one thing, accident values another. In Bahrain in 2020 Romain Grosjean hit the barriers at 192 km/h: the FIA report estimated a peak of 67 g. The data came from two sources, the car’s accident data recorder and the accelerometer drivers wear in their ear, because today even this is measured.

Grosjean stayed in the burning cockpit for almost half a minute and got out with burns to his hands. The credit, he has always said, goes to the Halo, the structure that protects the driver’s head and has been mandatory since 2018, part of a safety system that includes the survival cell, the helmet, the belts and the HANS head and neck support, mandatory since 2003.

2026: less downforce, longer braking

With the 2026 rules the cars changed character. The targets announced by the FIA were around 30% less downforce, around 55% less drag and a minimum weight of 768 kg, and the FIA itself had predicted lower cornering speeds. Less downforce means, in principle, less lateral force in fast corners, although no official values for the 2026 cars have been published yet.

For braking, on the other hand, the numbers exist. Brembo’s simulations for Monza 2026 give a stop from 318 to 87 km/h at 3.8 g for the first chicane, and a drop from 4.5 g to 3.7 g for the Roggia compared with 2025: braking that is less violent but longer, because part of the slowing down now goes through energy management. The driver is still an athlete working at the limit, but the bill the body pays under braking has changed.

Why a sponsorship blog talks about it

Because g force is one of the simplest ways to explain to anyone that a driver’s job is a sport, and not a very fast drive. For a brand it is a ready-made story: physical preparation, nutrition, recovery and the technology that measures all of it are subjects that speak to a far wider audience than the fans, and teams tell them more and more often together with their partners.

Anyone who wants to join that story, on the team side or on the driver’s, will find the starting point on our page about Formula 1 sponsorship. The corners, as always, do the rest.