This has been a strange year and, just when it doesn’t seem like it can get any stranger, it does. We have to find little pleasures where we can and this week, driven into the house by the smoke outside, our little pleasure is that Michele and I have new Covid19 masks and we are thrilled, well, not thrilled exactly, but a little happier than if we didn’t have them. We first saw the masks while watching Formula One Racing. 

Michele and I have been watching Formula One auto racing for years and this year is no exception except that the season started six months late and we are watching them race in front of empty grandstands; it is eerily different. Another thing that is eerily different is that everybody is wearing a protective mask – this does not seem to be an “I have the right to make other people sick!” crowd – and most of them seem to be wearing the same type mask. One of the fun things about Formula One, for me, anyway, is that it is so high tech, and the masks are not an exception.

Michele decided to research it and it turns out that, like almost everything in Formula One, the masks are high tech and expensive. They also work better than any other masks we have tried. The basic architecture is that of a four-ply mask held on by a stretchy outer layer. The mask is good for two hundred hours, is certified by a couple of EU Commissions, are easier to breath in than the N95 masks we had been wearing, and, strangely satisfyingly is that they are the same as worn by several F1 Teams.

Speaking of Formula One, Richard asked if Michele and I were distracted from the world’s worries by Formula One and Lewis Hamilton and the answer if “Yes” although today’s race, The Grand Prix of Belgium at Spa – known locally as the Grote Prijs van België bij Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps – was a pretty boring race with Hamilton winning from pole. The race was spiced up only by the leader’s concerns over tire wear. Formula One cars are terrible on tires, they have  extraordinarily complicated upside-down wings pushing the cars down onto the pavement to generate wear-creating adhesion. This race is slightly over a one hundred and ninety miles and most teams tried to run the race on only two sets of tires which requires a time consuming stop to change onto a new set of tires. Nothing is simple if Formula One and the tire changes – which the best teams do in about two seconds – are no exception.

Until the last possible moment, the new tires are wrapped in electric blankets which keep them heated to about 100°C – that’s the boiling temperature of water – so they go on the car as close to operating temperature as possible. The speed limit in the pit lane is 100KPH so the drivers pull in the driveway- so to speak – at about 60 MPH and stop on a mark where a guy with a pneumatic torque wrench is kneeling, waiting for the car to stop. When the car stops, the wrench guy removes the nut holding on the wheel, the next guy pulls the wheel and tire off, and a third guy puts on a fresh wheel and tire all in around two seconds.

At this point, I was going to just reference the video below, but, for reason unknown to me, clicking on it goes nowhere except to tell you you can’t see it here but you can see it on You Tube with a link which takes you to the 55 second video on the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team making a double wheel change. It’s only 55 seconds, so give it a click.