Car
FIA seat attenuator: The data-driven innovation that could save lives in Rally-Raid
by Samarth Kanal
5min read
The FIA has pioneered a potentially life-saving seat technology that will be used by all T1+ vehicles in the top-tier of the World Rally-Raid Championship from 2027 - and it’s already being used by the Dacia Sandriders team in 2025.
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From the Dakar Rally to the Rallye du Maroc, the Rally-Raid Championship is one of the most demanding off-road series in the world as it puts both drivers and vehicles through intense and sustained forces over long stages of competition.
As a new manufacturer in the Rally-Raid Championship, Dacia Sandriders has brought numerous innovations with its Sandrider car including a cockpit made with anti-bacterial fabrics designed using Virtual Reality headsets, magnetic plates along the bodywork to stop bolts getting lost, and this crucial safety feature.
FIA chief technical and safety officer, Xavier Mestelan Pinon said: “The seat attenuator project is something we are very proud of. It is a really significant step in terms of safety in the W2RC, where the cars and crews compete in some of the most extreme conditions in the world.”
An FIA-supplied 3D render of the seat attenuator, which is mounted inside the cockpit using suspension-like wishbones
How the FIA used data to produce the seat attenuator
The FIA and its FIA Foundation charity have developed the seat attenuator to protect drivers and co-drivers from spinal compression injuries during offroad racing events.
These injuries occur when the spinal cord undergoes excessive or abnormal pressure, causing nerve damage and numerous, often painful symptoms.
The FIA seat attenuator protects drivers by suspending the seats inside the cars with a special damper that absorbs energy from an impact. It is essentially a seat with suspension to take impacts.
The FIA used data from its World Accident Database, a database used by the FIA and its National Sporting Authorities (ASNs) since 2015 to log vehicle and medical data from accidents. This data can then be used to shape safety regulations for motorsport including rally and circuit racing.
The FIA used “virtual test dummies” to shape the traits of the seat attenuator
"The success of this project has been fundamentally supported by the use of numerical simulation with virtual test dummies, to define the optimal characteristics of the attenuation system,” explained FIA senior research engineer Paolo Panichelli.
The FIA found a ‘severe crash pulse’ target to protect drivers from in the Rally-Raid Championship. It targeted protecting drivers from forces of 40g - 40 times the force of gravity on a person - at an angle of 58 degrees from the horizontal axis.
The FIA then simulated the best way to displace those forces in the cockpit to tune a damping mechanism for the seats.
This crash pulse was then used in simulations to define the best force displacement characteristics for the seats installed in the competition cars, so that a damping mechanism could then be developed and connected to the seats.
The impact damper underwent laboratory testing and the FIA found that in this type of accident, it could reduce forces to occupants by around 50%.
“To provide such a big improvement in protection against possible spinal injuries is something very important for the competitors, and it is projects such as this that the FIA, with the fantastic support of the FIA Foundation, will keep investing in across all our championships."
Real-life testing of the FIA seat attenuator, which has debuted in 2025 but will be implemented fully in 2027
Why did Dacia Sandriders implement this new technology early?
Dacia Sandriders worked with technical partner Prodrive to develop its Sandrider challenge that finished fourth overall in the 2025 Dakar Rally and first outright in the following Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge at the hands of Nasser Al-Attiyah.
“Since we were building an entirely new car, the Sandrider, it was a natural opportunity to integrate and test the attenuator from the very beginning,” says Dacia Sandriders technical director Philip Dunabin.
“Working closely with the FIA, the system was developed to meet regulatory standards while pushing safety forward. The objective is to improve protection for all crews in the future.”
Dunabin explains how the seat is mounted within the cockpit of the Sandriders car.
The upper and lower suspension arms, to which the seats are attached, in the Sandrider cockpit
“The seat is mounted on upper and lower arms, similar to a double wishbone suspension system,” he says.
“To integrate this, the chassis had to be specifically designed not only to meet rollcage regulations but also to provide the correct mounting points for the attenuator arms.
“The seat itself is a bespoke development by [seat supplier] Sabelt, featuring dedicated attachment points for the arms. This set-up requires space between the seat and the bulkhead, which was factored into the vehicle design from the outset by Prodrive.”
Dunabin says that the seat has indeed been triggered in a few “high-impact” crashes with minimal displacement for the driver.
He adds that the impact of the seat attenuator was “so small that the crews didn’t even notice it during the race.”
Spinal injuries can have severe consequences and, just as the HANS (head and neck system), race helmets, and bespoke crash structures have done so, the seat attenuator could prove life-saving in decades to come.
