experience M VING PARTS The Red Bull Racing Australia team is as finely tuned and high-performance pitch-perfect as the V8s they work on. Story Baz McAlister Photography David Kelly t’s not yet 8am on a chilly morning at Queensland Raceway, near Ipswich, but the black-clad men of the Red Bull Racing Australia pit crew have been running hot for hours. Many of them were up before dawn to tend to the pair of sleek, gleaming, Ired-and-blue VF Holden Commodores ensconced side-by-side in their high-tech lair. This first day of the V8 Supercars Coates Hire Ipswich 360 weekend at the winding track 50km west of Brisbane nicknamed “the Paperclip” is practice day, but that won’t stop the Red Bull team playing to win. One by one, the $450,000 cars are shoved out into the pit lane, back wheels on castors, for a wheel-change drill. The men squat, poised, clutching their “rattle-guns”; pneumatic hoses snake upwards into an armature overhead. Four-time V8 Supercars champion Jamie Whincup’s spotless steed, bearing the number 1, is rolled between them, three either side. Then, built-in jacks stab downwards from underneath the chassis and a vexatious noise shatters the morning stillness. The rattle-guns are jammed against the wheel nuts. BRAAAAP! The wheels are off; fresh ones are manhandled into position. BRAAAAP! They’re on. Everyone steps back, as if a doctor has yelled “clear!” in an operating theatre. Four seconds have passed. Then they do it again. And again. Team manager Adrian Burgess watches it all with interest – a ▲ Rituals … (clockwise from top left) Four-time V8 Supercars champion Jamie Whincup; Whincup and teammate Craig Lowndes sign autographs for fans; the chequered flag gets a pre-race workout; extracting engine heat in the pit garage. 26 | experience notepad and stopwatch in the tall, grey-haired Englishman’s hands. Over his shoulder I can see the numbers. 4.0, 3.9, 3.9, 3.8. He looks satisfied. “That’s what we’re aiming for,” he says. This is the Red Bull Racing Australia V8 Supercars team, the slickest race operation in the country, showing a side of motorsport not many people witness. They see blistering footage of their heroes, Whincup or his teammate Craig Lowndes, roaring around the track, but they’ll never see the months of intricate work and millions of dollars that go into making them the star drivers they are. Picture a medieval knight riding into battle – it’s an impressive, romantic image. But take a moment to consider the horde of unsung peasants who smith and sharpen his weapons, craft and polish his armour, paint his shield, and train, feed, water, saddle and shoe his horse. If any one of them screws up, he’s dishonoured, defeated, or maybe dead. This world is no different. Guard of honour … It’s still pre-race, but Red Bull team manager Adrian Burgess stands ready for action. RIGHT IN THE CENTRE OF THE RED BULL Mark Dutton and Jeromy Moore, are the rosetta team’s pit garage is a big fridge, stocked to the stones that distil a baffling array of constantly gunwales with every conceivable variety of the cascading numbers into tangible, physical taurine-infused fizzy energy drink. When you actions. What tyres will the car need? What consider the hours these men put in on a race minor adjustments must be made? How much weekend, it seems as vital as the toolboxes, fuel should be onboard? The engineers don’t computers and kilometres of cabling. IF ANY ONE OF THIS UNSUNG perch at the Prat Perch, they stand. High stools The team’s headquarters is at Triple Eight Race HORDE SCREWS UP, HE’S are near at hand, but “they’re only allowed to sit Engineering, at Banyo, near Brisbane airport – but down if it’s an enduro race”, I’m told. their mighty MAN transporter truck allows DISHONOURED, DEFEATED, Matt Cook (or Cookie, according to his shirt) them to set up a completely self-sufficient base MAYBE EVEN DEAD. – one of the team’s four mechanics (there are two anywhere in the country. It’s parked behind the per car) – gives me the grand tour of Whincup’s pit garage, a great dark-blue juggernaut that took Commodore. Calling it a mere “car” doesn’t quite eight months to rig up – and it’s like something out wheels or striding purposefully with a clipboard. do it justice. With its single bucket seat and banks of Star Trek. The front trailer, locked down and Whincup’s No 1 car is on the left, closest to the of levers, it’s more like the cockpit of a jet fighter. accessible only by swipe-card, is the engineers’ very end of the pit lane – as the current champ, he Popping the door, Cook first points to a silver office and briefing room, all austere white walls leads everyone else out. Lowndes’ near-identical box where the passenger seat would normally be, and whirring laptops, the bridge of the starship. No 888 car is on the right. In front of it, four excited were this not a polished, half-million-dollar bullet. The B-trailer carries the cars, all the equipment fans – Mum, Dad and two little girls – pose, with It’s empty now, but it’ll be filled with dry ice for the needed to set up the pit, and 53 tonnes of spare Dad yelling “thumbs up!” as a crew member snaps race. “It can get 20 degrees centigrade hotter in the parts – enough kit to rebuild each car from scratch. a cheeky pic. They must have won a contest – visitors car than the ambient temperature,” Cook says, “so It takes about eight hours on a Thursday night to are officially off limits in the pits, but the beaming if it’s 30 out on the track, it can be 50 in here.” The unpack the truck and set everything up in the pit, family are not the only ones for the morning. Later, dry ice feeds into the driver’s race suit, keeping but when emptied, the B-trailer becomes the a squad of Queensland Fire and Rescue Services its temperature down to between 5° and 9°. team’s quiet little sanctuary. There’s a medical personnel descends on the garage, snapping pics The driver’s comfort, Cook says, is paramount. bay at the front, the domain of the team’s cheery of everything they see. At first I assume this is “The car might only be good to handle 95 per physio, Chris Brady; at his massage table, he does some kind of safety check, but it quickly becomes cent of the track conditions, but if [Whincup] is for the drivers what the mechanics do for the cars. apparent they’re in for a stickybeak. One white- comfortable, it doesn’t matter. He’ll push that extra The pit itself is the nerve centre of the operation, haired chap saunters past, eyes wide, grinning few per cent. If he’s not comfortable, he won’t.” almost a living thing. Its skin is canvas pit walls like a schoolboy, enthusing into his phone: “It’s Cook calls the yoke-like steering wheel the and thick, black rubber matting. Its bones are the unbelievable, mate. I’m right here where they “brains trust” of the Holden – adjustable to the interwoven bright yellow trelliswork; the cabling keep the cars. Everything’s computerised!” millimetre, it’s festooned with buttons, everything snaking around them its arteries, and the vast In fact, the deluge of data is overwhelming to from a pit lane speed limiter (40km/h) to a button banks of computer monitors its heart. the layman’s eye. At the rear of the pit is a monitoring that pipes a drink into the driver’s helmet. I resist And around it all scurries the team, resplendent station, a bank of screens presided over by a chap asking if it pipes in Red Bull. I do remark that in shiny black shirts, sewn patches on their sleeves whose shirt proclaims him as Irish. Telemetry is there’s no speedo. “He drives on instinct,” Cook proclaiming their colourful nicknames: Gooey. fed back to here from the “Prat Perch” – a column says. “We can put it up there on the display in Nackers. Wazza. Shady. There’s always someone of monitors front-and-centre, right between the two the centre of the wheel for him, but we don’t. ▲ coming or going, manhandling a stack of spent cars. Here, Burgess and the team’s two engineers, He doesn’t need to know how fast he’s going.” | 29 experience first time today the pit crew has moved so slowly. They pace, seemingly adrift without a car to focus on, intent on the audio feed, or eyeing the trackside camera feeds coming in on the monitors to catch a glimpse of their babies as they roar past. In the centre of it all, team owner Roland Dane has made an appearance, observing his empire from behind dark sunnies, arms crossed. Dane and his right-hand men watch as the Prat Perch monitors display multicoloured dots, representing the cars as they whip around the Paperclip. Suddenly: “Nice and easy, into the garage” from Moore, the engineer, crackles over the headset. Moments later, Luff pulls into the pit and the 888 car’s crew explodes into action, swarming the vehicle with tools. The car’s jacks stab down again, lifting it. BRAAAAP! go the rattle-guns as the wheels are swapped.