Special treatment for very special air cargo
Aston Martin Red Bull Racing needed a new challenge after performing three record-breaking pit stops during the 2019 F1 season alone. They found it at an altitude of 10,000 m on board an Il-76 MDK cosmonaut training plane. Assisted by the Russian space agency Roscosmos, they took the 2005 RB1 car to the Yuri Gagarin cosmonaut training centre in Star City and performed a pit stop in Zero-G.
This particular example of Red Bull's first F1 car had the added advantage of being hardened against wear and tear. It is the chassis often taken to public events, where fans are invited to try gunning wheels off and on for themselves. As such, it has strengthened axles and threads – deemed very useful were the car to be thrown around the sky while transitioning from a 2G climb to a weightless fall and back again. (ah)