Don’t you wish your local car dealership provided such efficient services? What usually takes a day at your service center is accomplished in about seven seconds at a Grand Prix pit stop. I truly believe the precision in their work can be called an art form! Here’s how it’s done:

Jacks:
1.2 man-seconds
Two jack men — one in front, one in back — lift the car a few inches so service can commence. The Red Bull jack is a simple mechanical lever (fewer parts to jam or fail) with a collapsible frame. Instead of letting the racer down gently when the work is done, a jack man pulls a switch to drop it to the ground.

Junk Removal:
2 man-seconds
If even a shred of a plastic bag gets into the guts of an F1 car, it could be curtains for the race — maybe even for the engine. So when the pneumatic gun operators are done locking down the tires, two of them reach into the scorching radiator inlets and check for dangerous hitchhikers.

Tires:
48 man-seconds
A dozen crew members swap out the tires, three on each wheel. One works the pneumatic gun, one pulls off the old shoe, and one mounts the new rubber (prewarmed to between 176 and 212 degrees). Then the gun man refastens the wheel nut — in Red Bull’s case, to a staggering 700 lb-ft.

Fuel:
11.6 man-seconds

It takes two crew members to handle an F1 fuel rig, one on the nozzle and one just to wrangle the massive hose. The amount for each fill-up is planned by race engineers and preloaded into the line. Once connected, the go-juice is pumped at an officially mandated 3.2 gallons per second.

Part Swaps:
53 man-seconds
The most frequently damaged part of an F1 racer is the nose assembly. Because it doubles as a jacking point, when a new front end is needed, the front wheel men must lift up the car and set it on a carbon-fiber box. If all goes well, the team can change out a nose during an average seven-second stop.

Total time: 115.8 man-seconds of work completed in 7 seconds!

Source: Wired

Posted in: Cars by eleventhst