You just watched it – it was over before the question ended. So let’s slow a Formula 1 pit stop down: around twenty people, three on every wheel, and three tricks hiding inside two seconds.
Trick one: one nut per wheel, dead center. Trick two: nobody ever touches that nut – it is trapped inside the wheel, so the old wheel leaves with its nut and the new one arrives with its own. Trick three: the wheel gun reverses itself – first pull off, next pull on.
A 3D engineering breakdown of the whole stop: the nose hitting the front jack before the car has stopped (powered jacks are banned – this is muscle), four nuts loose about four tenths of a second in, the one-second wheel swap, three tenths to tighten, the button every gunner presses, the green light and the driver’s reaction time. Then how small the margin is: Monaco 2021, where one gun wee wheel came off 43 hours later, back at thefactory. And the record: 1.80 seconds, McLaren, 2023.
The phase times are a typical modern stop asmselves, not a frame-by-frame copy of therecord stop.
Sources:
– FIA Formula 1 Technical and Sporting Regulations (one wheel fastener per wheel; no powered device may lift the car in the pit lane; pit lane speed limit 80 km/h)
– formula1.com, “Anatomy of a pit stop” (roles, captive nut, self-reversing guns, front jack, traffic lights)
– mercedesamgf1.com, “Box, box: pitstop explpit stop perfection” (phase times, the button on the gun)
– Guinness World Records / formula1.com: fastest pit stop 1.80 s, McLaren, Lando Norris, Qatar Grand Prix, 8 October
2023
– motorsport.com, the-race.com, formula1.com on Valtteri Bottas’ wheel nut at the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix
3D models (modified for this animation), licensed under CC BY 4.0 – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
– “McLaren MCL60 F1 2023” by Redgrund – https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/mclaren-mcl60-f1-2023-8340e27c325345e4aa92a6a31cc34b1e
– “race driver” by BELAZ – https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/race-driver-e4e97df9865d466c8359fbb23e757308
Wheel cut-away, wheel gun, jacks and gantry s: Poly Haven (CC0). Sound effects: Mixkitand Freesound (CC0).
Not affiliated with Formula 1, the FIA or McLaren. Educational animation.
#shorts #f1 #formula1 #pitstop #engineering
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