HIDING TO NOTHING

High-tech synthetics or the butt of an animal?

MotoGP and WorldSBK race suits offer a wealth of protection thanks to the presence of airbag engineering but custom-made leathers still blend properties of materials that go back before the wheel was even invented.

Curiosity regarding what MotoGP athletes are using as their principal form of safeguard against high speed tumbles and scrapes led us to a revealing sit-down with Alpinestars Jeremy Appleton last season. Just under half of the entire MotoGP grid were wearing their leather suits in 2019 (and more than twentyfive throughout all classes), among them the world champion and his HRC brandmate Cal Crutchlow. “They have so much experience with what works and what doesn’t work that it is very rare to see a problem with the leather or any problem,” says the Brit who has been using ‘Astars’ since 2014. “They are specialists and are constantly improving and that’s important because we have to maximise protection with weight, safety, design and many things.”

Onto the details then…

We have two fundamental materials in terms of leather…

It is either bovine (cow) or kangaroo and the vast majority of riders use kangaroo. The reason being that we can make the suit somewhat lighter because we can reduce kangaroo leather to be thinner than bovine. It is all to with the properties within the skin of the animal and kangaroo offers a bit more flexibility: the tensile strength is similar but a thinner kangaroo hide is more-or-less the same as a thicker bovine. Interestingly the bovine leather tends to retain its shape and fit for longer, and some riders really like that. They like the fact that a suit is tight and hugs them closer. Casey Stoner always liked to have a bovine suit because the feel he got was very particular. Someone like Jorge Lorenzo prefers more space and Kangaroo works just fine; if the suit flexes out for him then that’s better. It comes down to each rider’s approach and they are all super-sensitive to everything. So, for us, once we have defined the pattern and the fit solution for a rider then – until a change is planned – then every suit is made exactly the same as the previous one. Riders are sufficiently sensitive that they will pick up the difference in feel between two different suits and we go to great lengths to make sure they are identical. Nevertheless, you are dealing with an item that is made from a natural product and there are vagaries within that.

“CASEY STONER ALWAYS LIKED TO HAVE A BOVINE SUIT BECAUSE THE FEEL WAS VERY PARTICULAR. SOMEONE LIKE JORGE LOR- ENZO PREFERS MORE SPACE AND KANGAROO WORKS JUST FINE...”

In terms of construction then the base material for the suit is the animal hide…

Then it goes through a tanning process and we have a very unique technology which we apply to the outer surface, which is a coating that accepts the print finish that we put on the material. The suits in MotoGP are prominently printed. That allows us to make them as light as possible because we are not adding extra material and the base graphics can be any colour and whatever intricate patterns to get good registration, so they look very sharp. Most importantly it means we don’t cover up the ventilation system we build into the suit or the perforation and the suit’s natural flexibility is retained because we are not putting extra layers in. So, in the tanning and finishing process there are other chemicals used to make sure the leather feels good; things like antibacterial treatment and similar considerations.

For our wet weather suits we have an aquaphobic treatment we also apply to the outer skin…

For the rain riders have traditionally put on an extra layer, or a plastic, the problem with that - as you have probably seen on camera - is that they flap around because it is very hard to get the fit really tight and they don’t breathe very well. During a Grand Prix you are not getting rid of the moisture from a rider’s perspiration which is fatiguing. So, the aqua treatment has been a good win. We’ve substantially reduced the intake of moisture into the leather (which absorbs it quite ef- fectively) so it is around 70% better with the treatment. That means we tend not to put as much venting on a wet weather suit and it just shoots the water off the surface, which is helpful.

The Pros and Cons to bovine and kangaroo…

Generally-speaking bovine will last longer…but that that’s to do with the filaments in the hide of a kangaroo suit being longer and more flexible so over time they tend to stretch more than a bovine suit. The hide in the bovine suit is a bit thicker so again you have more longevity out of it. There are not too many other differences between the two. Kangaroo is more expensive and, critically, you have to select a good hide. At Alpinestars we define very carefully where the hides come from before we even get to the tanning process, and with kangaroo your sources are always going to be limited: the differences in quality can be quite great. Kangaroo hides can be effective provided they are the ‘right’ kangaroo hides and that takes research, development and an understanding of what makes the right hide.

We don’t add anything specifically with the material itself to help with abrasion…

What we tend to do is put external protection on the suit, like the polymers you see on the shoulders, elbows and knees, and where we have really high wearing areas we have either double-thickness or we scarf-out the leathers to a lesser degree. For instance, a lot of a kangaroo suits in MotoGP will be about 1-1.5mm but we might leave a little bit more thickness in certain areas. We could always go with harder and stronger leather but the trade-off is that you have less feel and with a stiffer finish. Riders don’t want that and in MotoGP it is all about sensitivity and as little weight as possible. Like other athletes in may sports these guys are operating at the absolute limit of their physical potential so anything preventing that is not ideal.

The MotoGP suits and customer suits are really similar…

They will have the same materials, same construction process and same performance and protection, even down to the lessons and applications we learn about venting and keeping a rider’s body ambient temperature during the race. We can move that across for the customer. In GP we are dealing with many highlyindividual fits as well as the graphic customisation, which means that the make-up process is slightly different even if the technology is the same. The suits that we offer to customers are simply a couple of months behind what we are doing with the riders in terms of the tech. The Kevlar stretch panels and everything else is the same spec.

Of course, not all of the suit is leather…

We have sought to improve the flexibility of the suits and that’s a case of using aramid fibres for the elasticated stretch panels that you see. On our suit we have what we term as a fully floating back: there is a multi direction stretch panel all the way around but that is actually concertina leather. So we stitch elasticated thread through the leather and that gives you that ‘accordion type’ effect which allows the suit to move very comfortably in any direction and also means the consistent leather itself is not being pulled in any particular direction because the suit flexes out and back in those joints. The aramid fibres perhaps don’t have the length of travel that the stitch has but they are very strong and allow us to join the leather panels with an area that is lightweight, very flexible and very strong for abrasion resistance. Those areas have increased. We have probably gone from 80-90% of leather down to something like 65-70% - hazarding a guess. The airbag has made a difference as well because we had to re-spec the suit to accommodate not only the airbag in its passive state but when it’s activated, we need to give the rider some breathing space.

Fundamentally the suits have remained predominantly leather because at the moment there is no better substitute…

If you look at all the performance criteria from a leather suit, then natural leather still does the job better than anything else. We’ve looked at multiple man-made fibres to try and improve areas and maybe in abrasion you can find a better material but it doesn’t breathe, or it doesn’t stretch or it is too heavy. All sorts of issues that don’t quite work. There is an ongoing battle and the material research department are always looking at different industries for new technologies and new ways to define the performance characteristics of a suit…but the lab test is the ultimate dictator before we get to the track. Until the lab team sign-off for something that is proven to be better what we’re already using then of course it does not make it onto the product. Then it comes down to our field testing at the track. First off what sort of response we get from the riders and what sort of evidence we get out of the use of the materials.

We actually have a test team…

Before the material would ever make it to the track it would be evaluated through all of the scientific processes and laboratory analysis. It would then go out on the road. It’s very likely that Gabriele [Mazzarolo, company owner] himself would be trying it. If it got through the road stage then it would probably come here to MotoGP and likely make its absolute debut at a test and we would involve different riders across the categories. The athletes themselves – by-and-large – tend to be very happy with the specification they are using at this particular time and any change we introduce needs to be done in a very open and communicated way so they understand what it is coming and why. They are extremely good for testing because they are mentally attuned to being highly sensitive and capable to analyse what is working and what is not working and what makes a difference to the performance on the bike. And they are used to giving feedback, which means we get great feedback! The development team are always looking to push ideas to change technologies as new things become available to us but ultimately the athletes are testing those ideas and new construction techniques and giving us the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or what adjustments need to be made to optimise it.

There have been times when the performance of the suits have amazed us…

I know we had a couple of riders in the AMA series – about ten-fifteen years ago - go down on the Daytona banking at very high speed and the suits were remarkably intact. That was impressive. Perhaps the one issue we began to look into as a result of those accidents was not so much the leather technology but the control of friction heat. Through our auto racing we came up with some solutions involving Nomex fibre which is a fire/heat shield material to see if we needed to be lining areas of suits for very highspeed racetracks to prevent that heat coming through. More recently the incident that immediately comes to mind is Loris Baz’s crash in testing at Sepang three years ago. That was a 200mph+ get-off and the deceleration between the time that Loris lost control and hit the track was minimal because we saw the airbag data. He hit the track at more than 180mph and the suit was battered but it held and Loris’ only fallout from that was a slightly bruised elbow. It was a good ‘pat on the back’ for the development team – not that we ever want to see riders crash or take pleasure in seeing them go through that situation but the fact that suit held up was pretty special.

It does beggar belief that MotoGP is so high tech but we are using the same materials as the cavemen…!

But like anything when you are dealing with it daily then you don’t think of it that way. It is a big compliment to ‘mother nature’ and it is extraordinary that something so simplistic has stood the test of time. With all the technology and all the know-how we have not been able to replicate what we source from an animal. The team of people in the racing development centre and the product department are incredibly clever at being able to harness properties of very natural material that has been around forever and find ways to use it better and more effectively.