People of the Pit Stop: A Chief Mechanic’s ViewDiscover the role of a Chief Mechanic during a pit stop.

HowmanypeopleworkonaFormulaOnepitstop?Askaroundandyou’llgetadifferentanswerfromeveryone.EvenwithintheF1paddock.Evenonapitcrew.Thehonestansweristhatthere’sisn’tananswer.Itdependsonhowwideornarrowyouwishtothrowthenet.

The narrow answer centres on the hands-on jobs, of which there are 20. Four each of wheel-off, wheel-on, and gunners, front and rear jack, two wing adjust, two stabilisers, traffic light controller and (people often forget this one) driver. But there’s a much wider group involved: the strategists calling the timing of the stop; the race engineer delivering tyre and wing adjust information; the team manager calling the crew out into the box… and then behind that there’s the next layer.

There are crew members poised with side jacks, with fire extinguishers, even a sledgehammer for the day when a wheel really doesn’t want to come off. There are alternates for every spot who train for the day when the primary is ill or injured. You might do years of pit stops without needing those people… but they’re there in case you do.

Phil Turner Ready For Action© Getty Images

Chief mechanic Phil Turner is one of those people who you hope isn’t called into action during a pit stop. These days Phil has a watching brief – in both the metaphorical and literal sense. He’s responsible for the marker board which helps the driver get dead on the marks and, if one of the drivers is hit with a penalty, it’s Phil doing the timing on the hold. When he doesn’t have a stopwatch, he’ll be holding a spotter button.

Phil’s watching the pit stop from the side of the box, ready to see trouble and press the button, keeping the traffic light red and holding the car in the box. At other times, Phil is one of those people who inspects the car when it pits after contact, using years of experience to make that split-second assessment of whether the car is fit to keep going. Phil’s not changing a wheel – but the pressure is still great.

“When a pit stop’s happening during a high-pressure race, you get mixed feelings,” he says. “There’s pressure, there’s excitement, there’s anticipation. You want to go out there and do the best job you can. If all the guns go off at the same time, you know the stop’s going to be a good one. If it all sounds synchronised, it all just happens. The amount of effort, the amount of time we put into practice, it all comes into those two seconds of a pit stop.”

Phil And Max Talk Pit Stops© Getty Images

To describe Phil as a stalwart of Red Bull Racing is a vast understatement. His career with this team stretches back to day one and goes back further than that to days when this factory produced cars that were white and then green. As such he’s had the best seat in the house to follow the evolution of our pit stops from the early days when we were a middling team with middling stops, up to the current performance level where the crew have just captured the DHL Fastest Pit Stop trophy for the fourth consecutive year. It is, says Phil, a question of people rather than kit. “The guys are on top form,” he says. “They all look after themselves; they’re all healthy, they go to the gym, they take practice seriously. Every practice pit stop, they treat as a race stop, taking every practice and every part of the pit stop seriously.”

It’s impossible to judge how many people contribute to any given pit stop – but it takes the whole team to do it well.

It Takes The Whole Team To Make A Pit Stop Work© Bryn Lennon