Pit Stop 2010: More haste, less speed

The biggest rule change that the F1 teams have had to tackle this year is of course the end of refuelling during races. As a result they have had to prepare for pit stops that will be much quicker than in the past. During the refuelling era of 1994 to 2009 the speed of fuel flow determined how long the pit stop lasted. Once the tyre change was complete, the guys involved stepped back and raised their hands, and everyone had to wait for the fuel hose to come off.

A stop could take as long as 10 seconds if a heavy fuel load was going in.

Now everything is down to the speed of the tyre changes. Stops are expected to take just 2-3 seconds this year, and that puts enormous pressure on the 14 crew members who have a hands-on involvement in that job.

Like every other team Force India has a jack man at front and rear, and three guys working on each corner of the car. One works the wheel gun, a second takes the old wheel off, and a third puts the new wheel on.

Now the tyre changes determine the length of the stop, and thus the team has looked long and hard at how to make the process as efficient as possible.

“We started working on it mid-season last year,” explains Force India team manager Andy Stevenson. “We started doing more and more pit stop practice at the races without including the refuelling, just so we could look at the areas where we felt we were weak.

“As soon as the season finished, we built up a car which was representative in terms of both weight and design to a 2010 car. It didn’t have wheel covers, which are now banned, and was up to the sort of weight that we expect the cars to have when they come in for stops, so the guys on the jacks could get into the swing of it. And we did close to 1500 rehearsals in the winter.”

During that process the team had the chance to rebuild the tyre changing crew from the ground up, by finding out who was best suited to which job.

“We reassessed the whole pit crew, so regardless of what someone’s job was in 2009, everybody had to earn their positions back. For example, being a gun man is always one of the plum jobs to have. We gave everybody an opportunity, through all the training we did in the winter, to have a go and demonstrate their skills. Then we reassigned all the positions in December.

“In the end the 2009 gunmen did keep their positions, because they proved to be the most efficient at it. But some of the other positions changed. We found some people were better at putting wheels on rather than taking them off, and vice versa. So we swapped people around.

“We also introduced a fitness training regime. Although in the past everybody was conditioned for pit stops, what you normally found at the beginning of the new season was that in the first couple of races everybody had aches and pains, from using muscles they hadn’t used for a while!

“We’ve tried to avoid that this year by continuing the practice all the way through the winter, and getting advice from personal trainers to help us. They’ve introduced training regimes for the guys, to help speed things up and avoid any injuries.”

One anomaly in the stops is that the front of the car is jacked up fractionally before the rear, because the guy on the rear jack has to swing round behind the car as it stops. Similarly at the end of the stop the front jack man has to physically step back before the car can leave, whereas the guy at the rear just has to lower the car.

“Getting the rear onto the ground is a very quick operation, but the front guy has to get out of the way. The rear guy just drops it. However, as long as you’ve got your timing right, and nobody makes any mistakes, front and rear should finish at the same time.

“Certainly in practice we’ve managed to get that very, very consistent. I think you will see teams working on jacks to make them more efficient, because it is a tricky area, and you’re always looking for those split seconds, just to gain an advantage. But you can’t use any automated device.

“Our main focus in practice has been consistency. It’s all well and good being able to do one stop quickly, but that doesn’t work if you’ve got to do up to four stops in a race between your two cars.”

Aside from the guys who are hands-on at the tyre changes, there is one other vital member of the pit stop team – the lollipop man. Other teams have gone for a fully automated traffic light system, but Stevenson believes that it’s better to still have someone who can physically stop the car in case of a problem by slamming down the lollipop.

“There is going to be an extreme amount of pressure on him! People up and down the pitlane are trying to make it easier by using light systems. We will use a form of light system, but it’s not quite as automated as everybody else is going for.

“I believe that you need to be able to stop the car if there’s a problem. As has been demonstrated by Ferrari, if you have a problem and you’re using the traffic light system, there is no way of stopping the car once it’s gone. It’s not foolproof.

“How some of the other teams’ systems work is when the front jack, rear jack and all the wheels are done, the guys will push a button. But if they push that button and then realise they’ve made a mistake, the car has gone. You can shave split seconds off your pit stop, but there’s no way of recovering it if there’s an issue. Whereas with a lollipop man you still have this element of someone personally making sure that it’s done.

“We’ve got our own advisory system that we will introduce, but that’s not what’s controlling the car, it will still be down to the lollipop man. I believe the experience of our guys is vital to keeping it safe. However, if we see that we are losing tenths in a stop we might have to change.”
The ban on refuelling obviously frees up the guys who used to be involved in that job on Sundays, but there are still a few extra roles in any pit stop.

“Because the pit stop time is so short now, we’ve had to put people in positions where we used to use one person to cover two jobs. So for instance, the guy taking off the front wheel would clean the radiator ducts, if we had debris in there. Now we have one person just cleaning the rad ducts, because there isn’t the time for the wheel guy to turn round and get it done. It used to be a job that he’d do during the refuelling.

“Previously the guy who put the rear wheel on would then do the external starter motor in case we had a stall, but now we have a dedicated guy waiting. We already had two people ready to do a manual front wing adjustment in the pit stops, and that has continued.”

The bottom line is that whereas previously everything depended on the refuelling, and thus the pressure was mostly on the man responsible for connecting the hose to the car, that load is now shared. But equally that means there are now more individuals who can make a costly mistake.

“I think it’s made it far more stressful. Another thing we’ve looked at doing is to condition the guys to operate in a stressful environment, and we were given some advice from the Special Forces. The pressure is shared, but there are more people to get it wrong. And this is why we concentrated on consistency.”