- [Voiceover] Being able to
control a Formula One car
at speeds above 200 miles per hour
is a skill that very few drivers posses
and while it's the drivers
that tend to get all the glory,
there's another group of
team members responsible
for keeping the car in tip
top condition on race day
and that's the pit crew.
With the F1 refueling ban back in effect
as of the 2010 season, pit
crews primarily concentrate
on one thing, changing tires,
and it happens really fast.
Let's take a look at a
modern day F1 pit stop
to see what's really going on.
As the car enters the pit lane,
the team's lollipop man guides the driver
into the appropriate pit
with a sign on a long stick
that reads "Stop" on one side
and "First Gear" on the other.
The sign resembles a large
lollipop, thus the name.
The driver pulls into
the pit and stops the car
at the exact same position every time.
It seems impossible but with four teams
of three mechanics working on each wheel,
a routine F1 pit stop
gets four used tires off
and four new tires on, is over
in less than three seconds,
sometimes much less than three seconds.
The current record for the fastest
F1 pit stop during a race is held by
the Redbull racing team.
At the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix,
driver Mark Webber stopped in his pit
for just 2.05 seconds to
change all four tires,
but it's not just the tire and jack guys
making it all work on race day.
Other mechanics are allowed to make
adjustments to the car
during the stop as well.
For example, changing the angle
of the front and rear wings to either
increase or decrease downforce
can be accomplished in
just one or two seconds.
Sometimes two additional mechanics,
one for each side, will
remove built up debris
from the car's air intakes
and yet another mechanic
is always on standby
at the back of the car
with a power-operated engine starter.
He's there just in case the
engine stalls during the stop.
When the entire operation is complete,
all mechanics pull their hands
and body away from the car
and the lollipop man releases
the driver from the pit.
In recent years, some teams have opted
to replace their lollipop man with a
semi-automated traffic light system
but either way, pit departure is often
a dangerous time for the teams.
There's a strictly enforced speed limit
but the pit lane is very narrow
and the merge into passing
traffic while exiting the pit
has to be perfectly timed.
So even though a typical
Formula One pit stop
lasts just a few seconds,
there's a great deal of
carefully orchestrated activity
that's fit into that short amount of time.
And pit strategy, deciding when to pit
along with a talented pit crew
can sometimes make the difference between
a podium finish and a DNF.
