The world championship-winning team, known for its quirky PR activities, recently trained its pit crew to pull off the so-called “pitch black pitstop” while celebrating their sixth consecutive year of winning the DHL Fastest Pitstop Award. The trophy is awarded to the team with the fastest pitstops on average across the F1 season, and Red Bull has once again come out on top.
Following three practices using blindfolds, the 22 pit crew members were then plunged into darkness in a dark factory, with their helmet visors blacked out as well. After 10 attempts, they improved their time from 8.84s to 2.84s, faster than some teams achieve over an entire race weekend.
During the practice, the tyre change crew operated blind, while its front and rear jack operators and the driver used night vision devices provided by the military. Jonathan Wheatley, Red Bull’s sporting manager, praised the team’s performance despite the daunting challenge.
Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool
“The time of 2.84 seconds is a strong stop even in broad daylight. I’m certainly not saying that I would like to turn the lights out in a race, but being able to pull this off so succinctly, in the pitch black, shows what a well-oiled machine the crew is and testament to the fact we have won six consecutive DHL Fastest Pit Stop Awards. Beautiful work.”
Red Bull has also held the world record for fastest F1 pitstop during a grand prix, until its time of 1.82s was beaten by Lando Norris’ pit crew at McLaren during this year’s Qatar Grand Prix, bringing it down to 1.80s.
In 2023 Red Bull won all but one grand prix with its dominant RB19 as Max Verstappen walked to his third straight world championship with a record 19 race wins.
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