Hacker News Reader

Comment by OtherShrezzing | Hacker News Reader

It's a pretty intense sport & that kind of timeline is fairly common. They'll do a full car rebuild right before the race, if the driver's had a crash in the session before it. So, the driver will be approaching a corner at 250kph+ in the full knowledge that the brakes were wired up to the pedal just ten minutes earlier. They'll make brake-balance adjustments on the fly in the car as they're speeding down the straightaway.

I think the drivers have some extraordinary capability for trust, because the chain of people who need to have got their job correct for that brake pedal to work in that moment is in the dozens, and the consequence for any of them getting it wrong is a particularly violent crash.

View on HN

There's definitely some trust there, but the drivers have been doing this since they were kids in karts with dad turning the wrenches, through the lower formula series, and into F1.

And the race engineers and mechanics have mostly all done the same, with many of them having studied in college for just these jobs. The UK has quite a few unis and technical schools with motorsports programs for both roles (typically motorsports engineering for the former and certificate programs + apprenticeships for the latter). And they likely started in F3 or elsewhere, then F2, then F1.

Haas runs the "TGR Haas Driver Development Program" to train younger drivers, mechanics, and engineers using historic cars (thanks to the rule change for this season, the 2025 cars qualify). I assume the other teams have analogous programs.

Rebuilding cars between sessions is a story as old as racing.

Even in stock car races, where they run those little 1.2 liter cars with 50 on track, they switch engines or rebuild the car, between sessions.

They can completely destroy their car in a heat and have the car ready again by heat 2.

In 2020 Hungarian GP, Red Bull rebuilt the front end of Max's car, /on the grid/, after he crashed out during a recon lap[1]. They had 20 minutes, but but finished comfortably early with 25 seconds to spare. Max finished that race in second position.

[1] it was a wet race so the race start was delayed after the initial recon lap.

There is a 20-minute video that shows Red Bull repairing Max's car on the grid while they wait for the formation lap.

>See how incredible teamwork from the Red Bull Racing mechanics enabled Max Verstappen to recover from a pre-race crash to taking the start of the 2020 Hungarian Grand Prix.

[1] https://www.formula1.com/en/video/hungarian-gp-red-bulls-inc...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com