Milton Keynes F1 team Red Bull pull off incredible zero-gravity pit stop

Milton Keynes-based F1 team Red Bull have successfully completed the world's first zero-gravity pit stop!

A team of 16 mechanics took just 20 seconds to pull off the stunt which was carried out in an Ilyushin Il-76 MDK cosmonaut training plane above the skies of Russia.

With the help of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, the crew endured a week of gruelling flights, with each flight consisting of a series of parabolas which is when the plane climbs at 45 degrees before falling again in a ‘ballistic arc’ at the same angle.

"The first parabola we did was really quite strange," mechanic Paul Knight said.

"Nothing can prepare you, so our Roscosmos instructors told us to simply sit through it and get used to the experience. There isn't a sensation of going up or down; climbing at 2G, with twice your normal bodyweight feels like being planted into the ground and you struggle to move. Then that sensation reverses when you go over the top and into freefall. They held us down to stop us floating away!"

The team's first-ever F1 car, the RB1 from 2005, was selected for the challenge because it's smaller than the current generation of cars on the F1 circuit.

To make things even more complicated, each filming session had to be reduced to just 15 seconds in order to ensure no one could get hurt.

"Car and equipment had to be carefully secured before and after each weightless period (no-one wants gravity returning when car, tyres and pit crew are a metre off the deck), reducing each filming session to around 15 seconds," Red Bull said on their website.

"It was quite possibly the most technically-demanding activity the live demo team have ever undertaken, but also perhaps the most rewarding."

The impressive accomplishment caps off a great month for Red Bull who also broke the world record for Formula 1’s fastest ever pit stop at the 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix when they changed Max Verstappen’s tyres in just 1.82s.