You don’t have to be a Formula One racing fan to appreciate the incredible skill that goes into a perfect pit stop. Pit crews have to be capable of swapping out tires, refueling, and even replacing an entire front end in just seconds. It’s incredible, and it all falls apart if even one of the team members isn’t at the top of their game.
Aston Martin Red Bull Racing is one of the top F1 teams, and the pit crew is top-notch. They’ve long since proven that they’re a capable team, but just how good are they? To find out, the skilled mechanics recently put their skills to a truly insane test, carrying out a pit stop on an F1 car while floating in zero gravity.
The crew and a Red Bull-branded Aston Martin were loaded into a massive cargo plane that is typically used to train Russian cosmonauts before they head into space. The plane travels in an arc, flying high before cruising down at a steep angle that gives passengers (and in this case, an entire F1 car) the feeling of weightlessness.
Drawing on the help of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, the Team took the 2005 RB1 car to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City and set about proving that the sky really is the only limit by completing a pit stop in zero gravity!
To be totally clear here, there is very little point to any of this beyond the fact that it’s incredibly cool. It’s a wonderful test of teamwork, of course, but this is definitely more of a “because we can” stunt than anything else.
That fact aside, the video is absolutely great. Seeing the crew members wrangling the tools, tossing tires back and forth, and even flipping the entire vehicle over is a real treat.
