Ryo Hirakawa Overshoots Pit Box and Hits Mechanic During Austrian GP FP1
· Yahoo Sports
Even a Le Mans champion can have an off day in the pit lane. Ryo Hirakawa, a two-time FIA World Endurance Championship winner who took Le Mans glory in his very first WEC season, made a considerably less glamorous move during a Haas free practice session, overshooting his pit box and clipping one of his own mechanics in the process.
Hirakawa holds the role of official reserve driver at Haas for the 2025 Formula 1 season, which makes this the sort of incident you really don’t want attached to your name before you’ve even started a race.
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Sky Sports F1‘s Ted Kravitz was on the scene for the pitlane chaos and gave the most vivid account of it:
“Ryo Hirakawa has just hit one of his mechanics! Hirakawa is not inexperienced. He has an aero rake on the front of his Haas but misses the pit box completely, goes long and hits the mechanic. The mechanic goes down but is absolutely fine. They did the nose change they were going to do then carried on his way.”
The Pit Lane Was Already Having a Rough Day
Kravitz made clear this wasn’t an isolated moment of mayhem, it was just one entry in a longer log of pit lane drama. “We have leaks, stoppages and bruises in the pit lane,” he said. “I’m a bit nervous to go back!”
Thankfully, neither the mechanic nor the driver appeared to be hurt – the crew member went down, got back up, and the team pressed on.
The irony here is that Hirakawa is about as credentialed as reserve drivers come. He was Super GT GT500 champion in 2017 and finished runner-up in Super Formula in 2020 before building his endurance career into one of the most decorated in the WEC’s modern era.
He signed with Alpine as official test and reserve driver in 2025 before transitioning to Haas later in the year – a move that made sense given his longstanding ties to Toyota, which backs the Haas operation through TGR. Pit stops, in theory, are well within his experience level.
In practice, apparently not on this occasion. The aero rake fitted to the nose of the car – standard gear for gathering aerodynamic data during practice runs – would have affected forward visibility, though that’s only a partial excuse when you have an entire pit crew standing in your intended stopping zone. Haas will likely chalk it up as one of those things. The mechanic walked away fine and the session continued.
Hirakawa’s job as reserve driver is to be ready when called upon without making the wrong kind of news. He’ll want to forget this one quickly.