BREAKNECK SPEED

TO AID IN F1 STRENGTH TRAINING, A THERAPIST HAS INNOVATED A SAFER WAY TO REMAIN HEAD STRONG.

- BY ALEX KIERSTEIN

CANTILEVERED ATOP a spindly, vulnerable column of bone, nerve, and muscle is a 10-pound shell filled with a brain and sensory organs and protected by an additional three pounds of racing helmet. The neck stabilizes a driver's vision against extreme g-forces, which can multiply that weight by a factor of five in Formula 1. You try holding a 65-pound head straight. Now do that while hitting an apex with millimeter accuracy at 190 mph.

Physics conspires against the driver, and the relentless violence of racing tortures the neck. To endure takes raw strength. Everyone has a neck. But an average F1 driver can exert 100 pounds of neck extension pressure—twice what an average nonathlete can produce, according to British physiotherapist Don Gatherer. The neck is an interdependent biomechanical system manipulated by more than 20 muscles that wind among massive blood vessels, including arteries that feed the brain's ravenous hunger for oxygen. Each muscle has multiple roles; injure one, and the entire system suffers.