Red Bull holds the world record for the fastest pit-stop in a Formula One race — it can now boast the first pit-stop performed in zero gravity conditions.
The former world champions took its 2005 F1 car to an altitude of 33,000 feet on board an Ilyushin Il-76 MDK cosmonaut training plane, drawing on the help of Russian space agency Roscosmos. Car equipment was carefully secured before and after each weightless period.
When the car was worked on at zero-gravity, car and mechanics floated at around a metre off the ground. Last weekend Red Bull broke its own record for an F1 pit-stop, with its car stationary for a lightning fast 1.82s — each filming session at zero-gravity was limited to 15 seconds.
Watch the remarkable video below.
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Red Bull Racing take a pit stop to new levels, in the weightlessness of zero gravity, for the first time.
A Red Bull release said: “Over the course of a week, pit crew members took a crash course in cosmonaut training in preparation for multiple Zero-G flights in the plane’s fuselage along with the F1 car and a 10-strong film crew. Each flight consisted of a series of parabolas, with the aircraft climbing at a 45 degree angle, then falling in a ballistic arc, to produce a period of weightlessness of around 22 seconds before the next climb.”