Together, Adidas and Inuteq have created a jacket and a vest that double the impact of just wearing a cooling vest.
Cooling products are an immersive segment with more and more products that are made for the sports industry. When the drivers in the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team competed in the first race of the season in Melbourne last week, they did so in a brand new cooling invention from one of their team sponsors, Adidas.
For this F1 season, Adidas has integrated the Climacool System into an insulated jacket and a specially created cooling vest. This has been done to keep the drivers cool, as hot conditions can impact driver performance. Even though Melbourne’s March weather brought temperatures of around 25 degrees this weekend, it will be much hotter later on. In hot conditions, drivers can experience temperatures in their car reaching 55-60 degrees Celsius, leading to up to 4.2 kg of sweat loss.
Two garments instead of one
The current solution in the sport is to wear a cooling or ice vest. Still, Adidas has created the Climacool System to maximize the benefits and deliver reductions in skin and core temperature that are unachievable using vests alone. The Adidas Climacool Jacket consists of a cooling agent working in tandem with cooling fans and insulative materials.
When Adidas started developing the project, it turned to Inuteq. The Dutch company is one of the world’s major developers of cooling garments and has customers like the pro bike team Jumbo-Visma. Lab tests showed that the two garments together created almost double the impact of wearing only a cooling or ice vest on skin and core temperature. According to existing research conducted by the two companies, reductions in core and skin temperature can result in better performance in cognitive tasks as well as improved decision-making. Endurance benefits, measured as time to fatigue in time trials, can also improve by up to 25 percent.
Two of the team drivers, Kimi Antonelli and George Russell, took the opportunity of pre-season testing in Bahrain to incorporate the cooling system into their race day setup. From now on, the drivers will have it available to them throughout the season, when the conditions mean the potential performance benefit can be realized. Both drivers and their race teams will continue to provide feedback to Adidas to help find every possible performance edge in the design, Adidas said.
“When we returned to motorsport, we wanted to see how we could bring true performance benefits to the teams, Alasdhair Willis, Chief Creative Officer of Adidas, said. “Our Climacool System is the first example of how we will bring innovation into the sport. We are challenging ourselves to deliver more impact, at greater speed, and to develop products tuned to the specific needs of more sports. We will create the very best for the drivers.”
