Ollie Bearman suffered a right knee contusion in a frightening 50G crash in the middle of Formula 1\u2019s Japanese Grand Prix, having swerved to avoid Franco Colapinto\u2019s Alpine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On lap 22 of 53, Bearman was caught out by a sizeable closing speed to Colapinto on the entry into the Spoon curve, taking to the grass and spearing into the barriers on the outside of the corner.<\/p>\n
That triggered a safety car and marked the first incident of a grand prix that had essentially run incident-free to that point.<\/p>\n
Bearman was visibly limping right after the crash and had an X-ray at the medical centre after the crash.<\/p>\n
He didn’t suffer any fractures from the 50G crash, was alert and communicating, but does have a contusion (bruising) on his right knee.<\/p>\n
It appears to be the first major example of something the likes of McLaren team boss Andrea Stella has warned about – the rapid closing speeds 2026\u2019s style of racing can create.<\/p>\n
\u201cA huge closing speed to car in front, he had to take avoiding action, scary,\u201d Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu said to Sky.<\/p>\n
Asked if Colapinto had moved too late, Komatsu said:\u00a0 \u201cNo, the main thing is the closing speed [which is] huge.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Spoon Curves are a \u2018zero kilowatt\u2019 zone where drivers can switch to no MGU-K power, so it is potentially the highest speed differential that would be experienced at Suzuka if the lead car is cutting down to 0kW with the chasing car using boost.<\/p>\n
Colapinto ran wide when Bearman went into the barriers, but he emerged unscathed from the incident.<\/p>\n
The stewards reviewed the incident and quickly determined no further action was necessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ollie Bearman suffered a right knee contusion in a frightening 50G crash in the middle of Formula 1\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-571525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}