The pit stop

In the past few years, the pit stop has been transformed from a necessary evil into one of the most intense and important aspects of the grand prix weekend. With overtaking at a premium, a clever strategy complemented by a well executed pit stop can make the difference between winning and losing a race. Formula One, more than ever before, has become a team game and the captain of the Honda Racing F1 Team pit crew is Alastair Gibson.

Gibson’s official title is ‘Pit Stop Controller’ and he can be seen holding the ‘lollipop’ in front of the car on a grand prix weekend. He must stand cool and relaxed as a Formula One car, piloted by an adrenaline-fuelled driver, races towards him at 100kph. “You never get used to the feeling,” he says. “There are so many cars braking and accelerating all around you that it feels like you’re stood in the middle of a motorway.”

Thankfully, he has never been run over by his own driver – a perpetual hazard for the lollipop man. “Stops with a rookie driver can be a little bit hectic,” he says with a grin, “but both Jenson [Button] and Rubens [Barrichello] are used to stopping on their mark. It comes with experience.”

Nor has he been struck by a rival car, but there have been some near misses. “I was nearly hit by Nick Heidfeld’s Prost at Monaco a few years ago,” he recalls. “He must have missed me by a millimetre.” There can be no denying that he has a dangerous role. “Fire is the biggest concern, or two cars touching in the pit lane.”

As the controller of the pit stop, Gibson is responsible not just for his own actions, but for those of the entire pit stop crew. “It’s my job to recruit and train the necessary personnel,” he says. These recruits are chosen from within the Honda race team and the pit stop crew lead double-lives, working in the garage and on the race cars before the race – Gibson himself doubles as the Race Team Chief Mechanic.

To optimise the training process, Gibson helped to develop a bespoke pit stop vehicle using one of last year’s race chassis. “We fitted it with a Honda ATV (All Terrain Vehicle) engine,” he explains. “It’s capable of 20mph and it’s kept at the factory. We drew a pit stop box in the office car park to allow us practice stops away from the race weekend.” A mechanic will drive the car into the box, the tyres will be changed and a fuel nozzle applied, before the car accelerates away.

“We typically practice 30-40 stops in a single session, with the stops ranging from two to seven seconds,” says Gibson. “The training vehicle has made a huge difference to our performance.”

This practice continues at a race weekend. “We’ll perform 30-40 ‘push-ins’ on both the Thursday and the Saturday evening,” he says. “Then we’ll perform 20-30 more on a Sunday morning. No pit stop is ever perfect and we need to be ready for every eventuality. It’s all about how you react to a given situation.”

The pressure on the team during a race should not be underestimated. “A decision to stop can be taken as little as 10 seconds before the entry to the pit lane so your concentration has to be absolute. Staying alert during a race of up to two hours is not easy, especially when you’re sweltering inside a fire proof racesuit and helmet.”

Part of Gibson’s role is to act as a link man between the pit stop crew and the engineers on the pit wall. “I’m constantly watching the TV screens and talking to the engineers as I build up a picture of the race,” he says. “We need to know, for example, whether we need to make front wing flap adjustments [to alter the car’s handling] during the stop.”

The majority of stops in Formula One take less than seven seconds. “We can change the tyres in 3.7 seconds, but the length of the stop is normally determined by how much fuel we’re adding.” Sometimes it is also necessary to make running repairs to the car. “Today, we can change a damaged nose cone in less than ten seconds,” says Gibson, with understandable pride.

When the tyres and fuel have been added, it’s Gibson’s task to lift the lollipop and release the driver as quickly as possible, while ensuring that it’s safe for the car to re-enter the pit lane. “The tyre changers place a hand on top of the tyre to indicate when the change is complete, and I can see when the fuel nozzle has been released,” he says. “I have six things to monitor and only about 0.2 of a second to react. And I can normally hear people talking in my headphones.”

The role of the pit stop team is far from easy but the inevitable lows when things go wrong are compensated for by some incredible highs. “Jenson’s last stop in Hungary this year was just 3.5 seconds long,” recalls Gibson. “The team performed brilliantly under the most extraordinary pressure. It’s nice to think that we played our part in ensuring Honda’s first grand prix victory of the modern era.”