How it works, how Red Bull got to be the best and what Haas is doing to improve.
About a second separates the fastest and slowest pit crews when times are averaged across an entire season, but every team is capable of changing four tires in 2.6 seconds or less on any given day. Their procedures vary a little; their equipment may vary a lot.“Including the driver, there are 22 people that have to have a fantastic 2 seconds,” said Jonathan Wheatley, who as Red Bull sporting director oversees the pit crew with the fastest average time. “Not a great hour or 90 minutes.
Red Bull has the fastest average pit stop time in Formula One this season, and in 2019 it set a record — since broken — by performing a stop in 1.82 seconds. “I’m not sure that you’re going to be able to shave too much off that,” said team principal Christian Horner. The wheel-ons grab new tires that are still swaddled in heated blankets. Warmer tires have more grip, so teams are allowed to heat them in the garage to as high as 158 degrees Fahrenheit .The crew hears another warning when the car is 15 or 20 seconds from the pit box. That’s when the wheel-ons dump the heat blankets and the crew runs out to wait.
“In every 10 pit stops, I’m doing it perfectly once, or maybe twice,” said his teammate, Nico Hulkenberg. “It’s a very narrow box, and there’s around 20 to 25 members of the team standing there. It’s not an easy thing to do.” Mechanics flee the fireball that engulfed Jos Verstappen's car in 1994. Wheatley said photos from the fire are displayed in his home office, “a constant reminder of what can go wrong.”
Guns used by Red Bull and other teams automatically switch directions from loosening to tightening with a trigger press. They are “intelligent,” sensing when a nut is secure. “We’d love to be spending millions of dollars a year on pit stop equipment to make them the fastest, safest, most consistent pit stops we can,” Crolla said. “But we’ve got the equipment that we’ve got. We work to develop that within our own parameters.”
“We’ve made a good improvement over the last year, considering the equipment we use isn’t the same specification as others,” said Haas chief mechanic Toby Brown, “and we know there is still more time to be found.”“But you sort of have to sacrifice yourself a little bit and get in the way of the car when it comes in,” he said. “You can lose a bit of time by being too far away from the car.”
About a second after the gun man loosens the old wheel, he tightens the new one. He pushes a button on his gun that signals that the wheel is secure, and his corner’s job is done.
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