Inside the Alpine F1 team’s pit crew that can change four tyres in 1.6 SECONDS

WE’VE all had to wait an hour for a tyre change or a quick fix at a local garage.

But here’s a bunch of lads who can do all four tyres in 1.6 seconds. ONE POINT SIX SECONDS.

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It took me longer to find the caps lock and type that.

They are, of course, the pit crew for the Alpine F1 team.

They’re not called Lando or Fernando.

They don’t travel by private jet or have three homes in Monaco.

They’re called Ryan and Craig and Chris and they are the unsung heroes behind the Sunday afternoon superstars.

The trio work the front right corner for the blue and pink Alpines and they’re one of the fastest wheel men in the pit lane.

Their best time in practice is even lower, stopping the clock at just 1.37 seconds.

That’s Ryan with the gun. Craig wheel off. Chris wheel on. Ryan with the gun. Mind-blowing.

Chris, 50, said: “We are always pushing each other in practice to try to find that limit of the crossover of the tyres, one coming off, the other one going on.

“If you look at the videos, we’re millimetres apart when we cross the tyres.

“We’ve worked together on that one corner for five years now and the continuity is there. It’s sort of like muscle memory.

“We slow everything down a little bit in race situations so we don’t make as many mistakes. But we did a 1.6 on our corner in a GP last year.

“We’re getting some close competition from the right rear, which is good banter. But we’ve still got the title by two thousandths of a second.”

It was a privilege to see Alpine’s pit-stop rehearsals up close at Bahrain back in March.

You know it’s a fast one, as in really fast, when you only hear one sound from the guns. Meaning all four corners are in sync.

Ryan, 37, said: “You know straight away from the sound of the guns if everyone’s done a really fast stop.

“Up, one gun, down, gone. You can just sense it. When it all comes together, you feel so proud of everyone. So much can go wrong.

“Things do go wrong. But we work together as a whole team to make sure it is always as perfect as it can be.”

Anyone who watches F1 knows a slick pit stop is often the difference between success and failure for a driver.

Like when Esteban Ocontriumphed in Hungary in 2021.

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The pit crew had to nail a 2.5-second stop to fend off Sebastian Vettel’s undercut. And they did.

Craig, 45, said: “It was awesome. All your hard work pays off in that one moment.

“For a lot of us it was the first time we ever had to do a pit stop to win a race.”

But what about the stress of nailing it consistently under the highest pressure every time? And in front of billions of TV viewers.

Ryan said: “You get used to dealing with the stress over the years.

“Testing is stressful because it’s a new car, every procedure is new, but once we get into the racing it becomes a lot smoother and easier.

“Sometimes my sister or nephew will send me a photo and say, ‘You were on TV today, we saw you’ which is nice.”

Does he give them a secret tap on the helmet or something to say hello?

Ryan said: “You’re just working. You don’t notice the cameras.”

Chris added: “My nine-year-old watches.

“She can’t understand why I’m not waving to her while I’m on the telly.”

As with an F1 car, the race to find fractions of a second never stops for the pit crew, whether it is helping to develop new equipment or targeted gym workouts.

Chris said: “Up and down the pit lane, different teams have different advances on the guns and the jacks.

“There’s a bit of time to be made up, which we work on constantly to improve.

“We train for hours in the winter, in the gym, doing pit stop practice 20 stops a day, five days a week. We have a trainer who gives us specific programmes to work on.”

All to do their job on a Sunday in 1.6 seconds.

If you’re reading this while having a brew at Kwik Fit, your car should be ready soon.

Good luck to Alpine at Silverstone.

She’s clearly spot on

ELLIE’S job as “rear spotter” is to avoid any mishaps with other cars.

She said: “I won’t see any of the pit stops. I’ll be looking down the pit lane at all the other cars coming in.

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“We all have a button: The gun men, the front and rear jack men, our chief mechanic.

“To let the car go, everyone needs to have their buttons pressed. To say it’s OK to go.

“I’ll hold my button to say, ‘it’s clear, it’s clear, it’s clear’. Until a car comes. We have two marker boards down the pit lane. An entry zone and an exit.

“If there’s a car within those two boards I can’t say it’s safe to go and I let go of my button – and that breaks the green light.

“If it means our car is going to sit there for a second until the other car clears, then that’s it.

“At some races the pit lane can be wide enough that it’s safe to release and they won’t hit. But at races like Monaco, where there is only one car width, you have got to say, ‘hang on a minute, you can’t go’ or there’s going to be a crash.

“If there’s any unsafe releases, it’s on you. The drivers can’t see anything. They put their trust in you to make sure it’s OK for them to leave the box.

“It can get quite stressful. We had some pretty close calls last year. But it’s good. It’s one of those jobs that’s underrated. You can’t really practise it. It is just a case of what happens on a Sunday, that’s it.

“It takes a lot of people for a pit stop to go smoothly, it’s crazy. But it’s a nice feeling as well. We’ll all go back in the garage and give each other high-fives. It takes everyone to work together as a team.”

Ellie, 30, also helps prep Esteban Ocon’s race car on running days, and is a sub assembly co-ordinator.

She used to do stock car short oval racing and banger racing as a kid.

Ellie said: “I left home at 16 to go to motorsport college. My exact words to my parents were, ‘I want to be someone who wears overalls in the pit lane’ and here I am.

“There is nothing stopping any of us females doing any of this. You’ve got the same opportunities. I’m still striving to push on and do more.”

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FOR your chance to win an Alpine British GP cap – signed by Ocon and Gasly – follow me on Instagram @robgilluk and tag a friend by 6pm on July 9, 2023. Winner chosen at random.

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