Pit stops: passion, politics, and other paraphernalia

 

When Volkswagen India decided to make history by setting national records with a 24-hour endurance drive at the NATRAX (National Automotive Test Tracks) in Indore, we said, “Oh, hell yeah! Let’s do it”. But the drive was much more than just breaking the previous records and setting a new number to chase. It was an interfaith marriage of German engineering and Indian manufacturing against the test of time.

There, time did not just equate to 24 hours or 86,400 seconds, where every second was accounted for. But also distance/speed. And also, an entity to be befriended until ceremoniously outpaced. However you want to comprehend it, Volkswagen managed to accomplish what it had set out to do – make headlines.

 

 

The Virtus GT, equipped with the 1.5-litre TSI EVO engine, now holds the national record for covering the longest distance by a car within 24 hours, achieving 4,654.48 km. This also marks the sedan record for the same time frame. The Taigun 1.0 TSI SUV set a new national record by covering 4,423.82 km in 24 hours.

Moreover, the Virtus 1.0 MT surpassed the record for the longest distance covered by a car with an engine capacity under 1 litre, achieving 4,357.21 km. While the Taigun 1.0 TSI showcased exceptional fuel efficiency, achieving 29.8 kmpl over a distance of 1,305 km within 24 hours, setting a new standard for turbo-petrol engines.

Upon reading this, if you conjured a Le Mans-like endurance race in your head with its high-intensity track action, crafty strategies and effervescent rivalries, you’re almost there. Strip the previous sentence of all the heavy adjectives and you have Volkswagen’s 24-hour endurance drive. That’s one side of it, there’s a flip side which is just as arresting. The pits.

Endurance races are often won or lost in the pit lanes. That said, we have no reason to think of pit stops as rude commas in the pursuit of speed but as brilliant semicolons that allow one to tell an entire story, with multiple plot twists, in a single sentence. The action graph of the pit lanes mirrors the spirited bouts of controlled chaos of the tracks but in a much condensed time frame.

From the 1950s to today, there’s been a commendable 96% reduction in the pit stop time. From an average time of 67 seconds in the 1950s to approximately 2-2.5 seconds today, the politics of time have evolved and so have the passions. Volkswagen’s 24-hour endurance drive commenced at 2 pm sharp and from then on, all eyes were fixated on the cars and the drivers. For a few laps at least. After which, the wandering eyes began to look for stimulation elsewhere.

One might argue that the hardest part of any endurance drive is to endure the stress, the mechanical wear and tear, insane speeds for a prolonged period or even the temperature but it could be argued that the hardest thing to endure is the wait. That was when our eyes landed on the pit crew who were waiting a little too patiently as the hours laboriously went by.

 

 

There were three teams in the pit area – Rayo Racing that was running the pits, the Volkswagen technical team and the Apollo team monitoring the tyres. Collectively, they seemed like a happy bunch without a worry in the world. When asked if they felt any mental stress under these extreme conditions, a senior crew member candidly told us that they have trained technicians who have worked before with Rayo and/or VW Motorsport. So, they are well-equipped to handle the pressure, stress and coordination required in this format. Moreover, when the mechanics got the chance to take a power nap before resuming work, they chose to marinate in the energy of the pits instead.

Witnessing the scale of the event and the excitement levels of the pit crew firsthand, we were curious to know how much time and practice did it take to prepare for the event. The pit crew lead readily took us through their strategy:

“Last week we had a test run here where we calculated different scenarios – how is the potential tyre wear, what’s the fuel consumption like, etc.? And based on that, we created a theoretical possibility in reality. We had to make a lot of changes to the theory we made last week. There were a lot more mistakes in the previous module and the pitstop duration was so much higher. But after all that, we were pretty much proceeding as we had planned. ”

 

 

Based on the analysis from the mock run, they tweaked their strategy to meet the expectations of the drive and got a few more helping hands on board, procured more tools and equipment and spent an entire day practising pit stops. After all, there was no margin for error.

The pit area was stocked with fuel, spare tyres, windshields, extra radiators, even a differential and most importantly abundant wheel bolts, amongst other tidbits – all calmly waiting to become active agents of the choreography rather than passive props. They didn’t have to wait for too long. The Virtus GT going flat out needed to pit every 1.5 hours for refuelling, drivers changed every 3 hours and apart from that, the crew needed to be ready for any atrocity, especially, during the graveyard shift when the chances of having an unexpected rendezvous with the wildlife is a very real and unsavoury possibility.

 

 

On average, the refuelling took somewhere around a minute and the tyre changes – a good 3 minutes. While that’s not exactly lightning-fast, it’s still incredibly fast given the format of the drive. That allowed us the perfect opportunity to pivot to the other element central to the entire endeavour – the timekeepers. In this case, it was the Chronopulse team.

Timing is just basic maths. But it can get complicated very quickly. Chronopulse was entrusted with the task of maintaining transparency and keeping a log of the number of laps each car does with the help of five timing beams. This was then followed by tabulating the data to strategise the best way to beat the record.

Cut to 24 hours later, the records were heroically broken with a significant margin, from the margins.

 

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