The Red Bull Racing pit stop crew has decided to see how efficient it would be at its main task in pitch-black darkness. The video here shows both the training and preparation stage and the final attempt, which ended up being almost as quick as an actual pit stop in normal light conditions.
Before they began their little experiment, the Red Bull team asked each other how long they thought a blind pit stop would take. The guesses varied wildly from 2.1 to 33.9 seconds. Some of the most pessimistic estimates were surpassed very early on during training.
The pit stop was simulated in a enclosed room, but the team made every effort to keep things as realistic as possible. The racecar rolling by and being lifted, all operations being performed and the car being lowered back on track – all these steps were carefully reproduced. During the initial training, the participants wore helmets with dark film obscuring their visors, but the lights were then switched off altogether for the final 10 attempts.
The whole process was filmed on infrared cameras, with the spectators, the team boss and the racecar driver using night vision scopes to observe. The last out of the 10 attempts was the most successful, albeit it did fall a bit short of the team’s most optimistic estimate.