Formula 1 fastest pit crew take tyre changing to 33,000ft
Thursday 21 November 2019 18:46, UK
Red Bull have beaten world records for F1 pit stops on the ground and now they have taken to changing wheels at speed while weightless.
Using the team's first-ever F1 car, the RB1 from 2005, a pit crew set to work in the challenging and unique conditions of zero-gravity at an altitude of nearly 33,000 feet in an Ilyushin Il-76 MDK cosmonaut training plane above the skies of Russia.
With the help of the Russian space agency at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, the mechanics, car and film crew took multiple fights in the plane's fuselage after training across a week with filming reduced to 15 seconds per take.
"Each flight consisted of a series of parabolas, with the aircraft climbing at a 45° angle, then falling in a ballistic arc, to produce a period of weightlessness of around 22 seconds before the next climb," explained Red Bull
Support team chief mechanic Joe Robinson said: "It pushed us harder than I thought it would. You realise how much you rely on gravity when you don't have any! Something as straightforward as tightening a wheelnut becomes very difficult when the car is floating, and the only control you have is through the stiffness of your ankles, tucked into floor straps.
"It challenges you to think and operate in a different way - and that was brilliant. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and honestly, I could have stayed and done it all month. It was amazing. I think it's the coolest, most fun thing the Live Demo Team has ever done with a show car."
Red Bull's pit crew have beaten the record for F1's fastest pit stop on three occasions this season, most recently in last week's Brazilian GP with a rapid time of 1.82s.
