Fresh Air for a new life » Formula 1

F1 rewind to 1989

Adam — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:30:11 +0000

Ayrton Senna Suzuka 1989

Martin Brundle at Monaco

YouTube – F1 1989 アイルトンセナ SUZUKA 予選タイムアタック.

Le Mans, NASCAR, F1 Pit Stops compared

Adam — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:18:45 +0000

A little while ago I attended the Autoclub 500 NASCAR race with the family. Amazingly fun race, especially when going with people that have never attended something like this before. I have to admit it’s been a while since I’ve attended a NASCAR event and since my most recent race had actually been the Monaco Grand Prix, I couldn’t help but contemplate the differences between the various types of racing. Rather than hit on all my observations, I’ll just devote this post to one that stood out to me. So this one I’ll devote to Pit Stops.

NASCAR Pit Stop

Cup racers pride themselves on the the fact their rims have 5 lug nuts slowing down the process. Indeed by having fewer people, less advanced wheel nuts and less advanced fueling, the NASCAR pit stop is slower than F1 but not by much. It’s actually remarkable how much can be done in less than 20 seconds.

Formula 1 Pit Stop

6.2 Seconds! The F1 pit stop is practically an Olympic sport it happens so quickly. As can be seen from this video though, F1 is such a refined sport now that hundredths of second can win or loose the race.

Le Mans Pit Stop

I thought I would throw this in just to illustrate that every version of racing is somewhat different. The 24 hours of Le Mans has a much slower pace, again somewhat dictated by rules, but also due to the fact that the car is being thoroughly inspected to insure that tenths of seconds saved in the pits do not translate into minutes of downtime on the track over a very long endurance race.