F1 pit

http://m.wimp.com/pitstops/

they may take longer, but NASCAR pit stops are more impressive..

As much as I hate to agree with senor novaderrik, it's true.

There are so many guys on an F1 stop and no refueling (at the request of teams), it should be that quick.

Also, I dislike NASCAR except on road courses, just to put my bias out there.

i counted 19 guys over the wall, just hanging around waiting for the F1 car to stop- then once it got there, a couple of the guys didn't even do anything other than watch the other guys... a NASCAR crew only has (i think) 6 people over the wall, and they can't step off the wall until the car is like 50 feet away... then they have to run around to the other side, change the tires (which have 5 lug nuts, and weigh well over 50 pounds each), maybe remove or install rubber in the springs or crank on a wedge bolt, then run around to the other side and do it all over again... while all this is gone, a guy is dumping gas out of an 11 gallon can that uses nothing but gravity to put that gas into the car- and he will do that twice if the car's been out there a while.. and they are doing all this in under 13 seconds...

not saying the F1 guys aren't badass, just that the NASCAR boys are more badass..

just looking at this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzbhpHfqJiI

there's a lot goin' on there I didn't notice before

I'm impressed w/ both

Forgive me if this is a dumb question. When the NASCAR crews remove the lug nuts it looks like they do nothing with the lug nuts, do they fall to the ground? Then when they put the new wheels on I never see them do anything but put the gun up to the wheel studs. Are the new nuts inside the socket on the gun or somehow in place on the wheel?

HappyAndy wrote: Forgive me if this is a dumb question. When the NASCAR crews remove the lug nuts it looks like they do nothing with the lug nuts, do they fall to the ground? Then when they put the new wheels on I never see them do anything but put the gun up to the wheel studs. Are the new nuts inside the socket on the gun or somehow in place on the wheel?

I've been in the pits and those suckers go all over the damn place. New ones are 'glued' to the new tires and wheels.

Usually, the new nuts are 'glued' to the wheel. Theres even one wheel manufacturer that has a wire clip that holds the nuts in place.

In reply to HappyAndy:

take off lug nuts just fall on the ground. new nuts are glued to the replacement wheel w/ adhesive, IIRC 3-M weatherstrip adhesive or similar.

watch pit road of a NASCAR race after a flurry of pit stops.. you will see a member of each crew go out and sweep up all the lug nuts.. i've always wondered if the cars ever send them flying when they run over them as they take off out of the pits? it would probably hurt just a little bit to get hit by one of them...

Just go to the stores at any of the big race shops in Charlotte and you'll see a 5 gallon pail of lug nuts for sale. About a buck a piece and "only used once".

DeadSkunk wrote: Just go to the stores at any of the big race shops in Charlotte and you'll see a 5 gallon pail of lug nuts for sale. About a buck a piece and "only used once".

i think they are 5/8" coarse thread and take a 1"socket... pretty sure they probably sell used studs, too, if you want to use them on a yugo or something..

F1 pit stop shows what can be done (almost) without restrictions. It's amazing. They can also make wing adjustments in the same sub-3 second stops, as far as I know they use electric screwdrivers that are set to do X revolutions to get Y degree change in the wing.

In that timeframe, there's no room for error. I think the record in a race is something like 2.3 seconds, the car barely comes to a stop.

HappyAndy wrote: Forgive me if this is a dumb question. When the NASCAR crews remove the lug nuts it looks like they do nothing with the lug nuts, do they fall to the ground? Then when they put the new wheels on I never see them do anything but put the gun up to the wheel studs. Are the new nuts inside the socket on the gun or somehow in place on the wheel?

I think the V8 supercars can get penalties for spinning their tires because it shoots the lugnuts into the crew.

It is amazing how fast they can get an F1 car through a pit stop, compared to how fast we do things. I like this comparison:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y3PFc0Svmc

mbruneaux wrote:

HappyAndy wrote: Forgive me if this is a dumb question. When the NASCAR crews remove the lug nuts it looks like they do nothing with the lug nuts, do they fall to the ground? Then when they put the new wheels on I never see them do anything but put the gun up to the wheel studs. Are the new nuts inside the socket on the gun or somehow in place on the wheel?

I think the V8 supercars can get penalties for spinning their tires because it shoots the lugnuts into the crew.

i thought the Supercars had a single big lugnut like the F1 and Indy cars do? hell, i thought pretty much every top tier professional race series besides NASCAR used the single big nut...

don't some of the lower tier classes of the Continental Tire series use 5 lug hubs ?

novaderrik wrote: i think they are 5/8" coarse thread and take a 1"socket... pretty sure they probably sell used studs, too, if you want to use them on a yugo or something..

Or you can buy new ones at any circle track supply shop.

The awesome part is the socket. It's shaped kind of like an inside-out circular saw blade and is spring loaded. You don't have to fit the socket over the nut, line up flats. You just put it up near the nut and BAP. Don't even have to slow the gun down.

Sonic wrote: It is amazing how fast they can get an F1 car through a pit stop, compared to how fast we do things. I like this comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y3PFc0Svmc

This one looks a bit faster... although they sped up the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbjk7ENjJPw

I was watching a thing on being a NASCAR pit guy (I think it was Undercover Boss?) and it was insane. They hired a lot of former college and pro football players, because they're strong and fast. And they burn out even faster than pro athletes, most guys are used up by the time they're 30. It's that serious.

In reply to mndsm:

I was gonna add something like that. These guys train hard. Not just the actual "sports specific" training but in the gym as well.

For me, I prefer racing over pit stops, regardless how important it is to the strategy. The quicker the stop, the better, ie, get it over with and get back to racing.

gjz30075 wrote: For me, I prefer racing over pit stops, regardless how important it is to the strategy. The quicker the stop, the better, ie, get it over with and get back to racing.

which is the whole point of the fast pit stops- to get their car back out on the track and in a better position than the other cars. close races can be won or lost on pit road, which is what makes racing truly a team sport.

go back 45 years ago, and a NASCAR pit stop was measured in minutes... guys with big heavy shop floor jacks and 4 way wrenches changing tires.. then the Wood Brothers decided to bring an air compressor and a couple of impact wrenches to the track with them, which got them down to something like 30 second pit stops, which literally gave them a several lap advantage every time they stopped..

i'm pretty sure Indycars and even F1 was done similarly to NASCAR back before air tools- which is the whole point of the spinner blade center cap things that are just decorations on cars these days. they spun it on by hand, then used a hammer to tighten it... loosening it involved the same hammer in the other direction.. at some point they also decided that maybe air tools was the answer, but i think the good ol' boys in NASCAR beat them to it..

in the early 90's, one NASCAR team even brought SCUBA tanks for each tire changer to the track one time so they didn't have to trip over the air hoses, but NASCAR didn't like the idea of guys running around on a hot pit road with pressurized tanks strapped to their backs so they specifically mad a rule requiring the air hoses. there is a video somewhere of that pit crew in action with the air tanks, and they were just flying..

The Woods Brothers pretty much invented the modern pit stop, Ford sent them to Indy to pit I think their win in 1965.

THAT is funny E36 M3 right there!

Sonic wrote: It is amazing how fast they can get an F1 car through a pit stop, compared to how fast we do things. I like this comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y3PFc0Svmc