The time taken to change a set of tires during a racing event has been going down over the years, from a few minutes at the dawn of racing, to less than three seconds in modern times. Recently, the Red Bull Racing F1 pit crew changed the tires on one of their cars, during the Malaysian Grand Prix, in a telemetry-confirmed 2.05 seconds.
This beats an older F1 world record, which you can see in the video posted below – it stood at 2.28 seconds (officially). Apparently, the record was beaten no fewer than five times during the aforementioned race, and now the former record is not second in the hierarchy, but it is actually sixth.
The previous record was set last year by Jenson Button’s team, who recorded a 2.31 seconds time, while he made a stop during the German Grand Prix. Still, it is worth noting that these record-breaking stops do not include filling the tank with fuel, and only the tires are swapped.
Nevertheless, you can’t argue with the very high level of coordination and teamwork it takes to achieve something like this, and do it consistently throughout an entire racing season.
By Andrei Nedelea
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