Even if you're not a racing fan, this video is worth watching.
Side-by-side footage of Formula 1 pit stops from the 1950s and today offers a clear lesson in process improvement. The gains didn't come from urgency or brute force. They came from redesigning the work so that people, tools, and timing fit together smoothly.
That lesson applies far beyond the racetrack.
From a Lean perspective, it's a simple example of how process design, flow, and teamwork drive performance improvements over time.
What Changed Was the System, Not Just the Speed
What struck me watching the two pit stops side by side wasn't just the dramatic reduction in time. It was how much the work had changed.
The 1950s pit stop looked heroic. People jumping, hammering, straining. Effort was visible. The modern pit stop looks almost calm by comparison. Movements are precise, rehearsed, and coordinated. There's very little wasted motion and almost no visible strain.
That contrast reflects decades of system improvement, not just better athletes or stronger tools. The work was redesigned so that human effort mattered less and coordination mattered more.
More People Is Not the Same as Better Flow
It's tempting to look at the modern pit stop and say, “They just added more people.” But that misses the point.
Adding people without redesigning the work often makes things worse. Congestion increases. Hand-offs multiply. Errors become more likely. Anyone who has watched a hospital response team crowd into a small room has seen this firsthand.
What Formula 1 teams improved over time was flow. Each person has a clear role, precise timing, and the right tools at the right moment. Nobody is idle, but nobody is in the way either. That doesn't happen by accident.
It requires intentional design, practice, and learning.
Technology Helps, But It Isn't the Whole Story
The tools in the modern pit stop are impressive. Faster jacks. Specialized wheel guns. Better materials.
But tools alone don't explain the improvement. Without standardized work, training, and coordination, better tools just allow people to make mistakes faster.
That's a familiar pattern in healthcare and other industries. New technology gets introduced with the expectation that it will solve performance problems. When it doesn't, the frustration grows. The missing ingredient is almost always the system around the technology.
Safety Improves When the Process Improves
One thing that often gets overlooked in these comparisons is safety.
The older pit stop looks chaotic and risky. People are straining, jumping, and improvising. The modern pit stop looks controlled. The pace is faster, but the work is more predictable.
In Lean terms, safety is an outcome of good process design, not something that competes with speed. The same lesson applies in healthcare. When people have time, clarity, and the right tools, both safety and performance improve together.
A Question Worth Asking in Any Industry
Watching the video made me think about how often organizations assume their current staffing levels and processes are “just the way it is.”
Sometimes the fastest way to improve performance is not to push people harder or cut staffing, but to step back and ask:
- Is the work designed to flow?
- Do people have the training and tools they need?
- Are we relying on heroics instead of systems?
- What gets in the way of doing this well every time?
Formula 1 teams didn't achieve these results overnight. This represents decades of incremental learning, experimentation, and refinement. That's a reminder worth keeping in mind when improvement feels slow.
If you’re working to build a culture where people feel safe to speak up, solve problems, and improve every day, I’d be glad to help. Let’s talk about how to strengthen Psychological Safety and Continuous Improvement in your organization.
Mark – that’s awesome. In fact I was just talking about that recently but hadn’t seen the video. We were comparing the 9-12 month lead time to implement a software solution and discussing ways to get that down to 6 weeks – initially the team thought it was impossible.
Equally impressive is the reduction in the amount of time it takes Nissan (and probably Toyota, Honda, etc.) to change a production line from one model year to the next. Weeks? Nope. Days? Hours? Uh, uh. Less than 50 minutes. Achieved via a long, Lean journey.
The “long” part is important. In our haste to achieve cheaper, better, faster, we must keep safety foremost. Otherwise, bad things can happen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh6ndqIIKD8
As I tell my crew when we’re running late, “We’re going to hurry slowly.”
Yes, that video shows 60 years of progress. I wonder much was incremental and how much was step function improvements.
I would hope that there are fewer pit stop fires and crew injuries now compared to then.
The modern pit crew clip shows that sometimes it’s better to have less “efficiency” and better flow.
I am fascinated by hospitals and their assumptions that their current staffing levels are safe. They assume they can reduce. I wonder sometimes if the way to reduce total system cost would be to increase staffing, at least as a short term countermeasure.
People in healthcare do often don’t have time to do their work. Sure, we should reduce waste to free up time but that’s not always enough.
This video is really awesome. As a car guy and a retired racer, i can tell you that races are won or lost in the pits. It takes a surprising amount of effort to make just seconds up on the track, so every second in the pits is costly.
This is a dramatic illustration of years of progress in time and motion studies to eliminate waste from the process. Full coordination and flawless execution. Love it.
-Kurt.
Thanks, Kurt. One thing that was hard for me to tell… was the video an apples-to-apples comparison? Was the same work content done in each of the two pit stops?
Hey Mark,
From what I could see the 1950’s pitstop was 2 tires and fuel, whereas the modern pitstop was 4 tires and no fuel. Not quite apples to apples, but impressive all the same.
Thanks, Kurt. That helps. So the modern pitstop was actually more work content delivered in a faster time.
I bet it’s a combination of teamwork, # of people, training, practice, coordination, and technology/tools that all adds up to that big difference. But, it’s clearly not all technology nor is it just about better tools…
Agreed, a combination of things, lead by a repeatable, coordinated process facilitated by technology and tools. I bet with a fuel cell charge added to the pit stop they also serve the driver a latte. Its all about load balancing so no hands are left idle.
That being said, it does not looks like the driver was doing anything during that whole cycle. Looks like a wasted resource and an opportunity for improvement!
[…] video showing the dramatic differences between the same process being performed 60 years apart. Formula 1 Pit Stops 1950 & Today… a Huge Difference. I love seeing videos like this, because it can show huge advancements in a short clip, while […]
Such a great video. The flow and efficiency part is amazing, but I was struck by the tools they used as well! Watching the “jack guy” in the 50’s video jumping up and down on the lever to lift the front end, and the “wheel guy” hammering away on what I assume was some kind of wing nut really hit home. Too often we ask people to jump up and down and find a bigger hammer…..
[…] Graban at LeanBlog.org shares this great video comparing Formula One pit stops from today and […]
I came across this entry as I was searching for material to write part of some course material for a Lean course, specifically looking at the process of incremental improvement, small % every year.
This is excellent but we can extend the analogy to Lean IT with processes and tools being streamlined towards the ultimate goal.
Currently the time is around 2.5 and in fact they don’t want to go faster to avoid penalties as a result of unsafe releases or making a human error and delaying the pit stop. THey feel it cannot evolve because they are on the edges of human performance :)
I discovered this video as I prepared to deliver a course on Changeover Reduction. Very informative, especially when you see the comparison of what happened in the 1950’s to what happens today.
The video definitely shows what is possible and can help class participants list the items that make the changeover more efficient. Helps them to think out of the box to what is possible.