Last weekend in Brazil, with Max Verstappen, Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s crews performed another record-breaking pitstop. But what happens when the bulls are freed from the chains of gravity?
Never at a loss for out of the ordinary ideas, Red Bull recently took their team’s pitstop skills to a whole new level, or an altitude of 33,000 feet to be precise.
With the help of Russian space agency Roscosmos, the RBR’s crews took a 2005 RB1 on board an Ilyushin Il-76 MDK cosmonaut training plane to attempt the fastest possible pit stop in zero gravity conditions!
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Video: Watch Red Bull secure amazing new pitstop record
A few flights were necessary to get everyone accustomed to the Zero-G conditions, with each one consisting of a series of parabolas – with the aircraft climbing at a 45° angle, then falling in a ballistic arc at 45° – giving the pit crew a period of weightlessness lasting around 22 seconds before the next climb.
So a sub 20-second stop was basically the crews’ target.
The team also had a purpose-built set onboard the plane to host RB1, as Marcus Prosser – Red Bull’s head of brand and events – explained.
“We built quite a complex set, hiding all the rails for lights and the cameras. Space was at a premium and having a narrower car gave us a little bit more manoeuvrability within the fuselage,” he said.
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