It's the sight every mechanic in the Supercars' pitlane dreads. The TV in the garage cuts to a shot of a car in the wall, and it quickly becomes apparent it's one of your team's cars.
The first instinct is obviously to make sure the driver is OK, but once that's done, what goes through the mechanic's heads?
It might look like chaos in the pitlane as the team gets ready to receive a damaged car, but it's organised chaos.
As Red Bull Holden Racing Team workshop manager Kris Goos explains, the moments after a crash are when the mechanics really earn their keep.
"You're just thinking what to grab," Goos told Wide World of Sports.
"Your head is trying to process it quickly. Is it something we can fix in pit lane? Or do we need to pull the car into the garage? Can I see enough from the TV picture?
"Depending on the damage, you're trying to figure out if you're going to lose a lap. You might have to do a half-arsed repair just to avoid going a lap down.
"It's instantaneous disappointment, but anyone who dwells on that too long probably hasn't been in the game that long.
"You just have to have the ability to move on, and think quickly about how to fix it."
Sometimes the damage is terminal and the car can't be sent back out on track quickly. Craig Lowndes had a tyre failure in New Zealand in 2015, that sent his car into the wall at top speed.
That's when it's all hands on deck, and often plenty of lost sleep.
"When that car came back it had mega damage. The engine had shifted, the rails were bent, the cross-member was bent, all the cage was crimpled," Goos recalls.
"There was damage in every single corner of the car.
"The car went to a local shop that we found down the road that could straighten things out enough that we could get it back.
"I was on the other car, once I'd done the prep on that I put out everything they'd need on the four corners, the right bolts, the right tools to put it back to together.
"We had a couple of people on each corner, and a couple of lads on the front to work on the internal stuff.
"The sun came up the next morning and we finished 1-2 on the Sunday. It would have been an amazing achievement just to get the car on the track, let alone finishing second."
It's when the teams are under pressure that mistakes sneak through. Goos recalls a time from earlier in his career when he sent a car out on track without any oil in the differential, while there's whispers that a rival team – Goos is cagey when identifying them – once had a car retire because they forgot to put oil in the engine.
It's why the teams are now so strict about ensuring the procedures are followed to the letter. Detailed jobs lists are now the norm, rather than relying on memory as was the case in days gone by.
"When things go wrong, it's often because it's been done in a hurry," Goos said.
"We're massive on accountability. Every job that's done is ticked off and checked by someone else. It's similar to putting a plane in the sky.
"You can't be too proud to have someone look over your shoulder.
"But mistakes get through from time to time, and you have to be big enough to put your hand up when it happens."
Despite all the checks that happen before the driver leaves the pits, things still go wrong. Goos has been around Supercars long enough to see his fair share of weird happenings.
"The endurance races, like Bathurst, are when the strange things rear their heads," he said.
"Like in 2011, one of the multiple times Jamie (Whincup) has been there and been the quickest car but not won the race.
"An electrical fitting on the back of the alternator broke, but at the time we thought we'd done an alternator, which would take multiple laps to change. So we were just throwing new batteries at it all the time to keep it going.
"But then the battery voltage went so low in the car it was enough to run the engine, but not the radio, so Jamie didn't hear the call to come into the pits.
"We lost Bathurst for the sake of a $2 part."
Random failures are why parts that are seemingly fine are replaced well before their expected point of failure. It might seem like unnecessary work, but it's vital to keeping mechanical failures to a minimum.
"We change parts as a precaution all the time," Goos said.
"It's the usual battle between the engineers and the mechanics. The engineers will want to change something if there's the slightest doubt, then some mechanics will argue the point for longer than it would have taken to just change the part!
"But everyone's a smart like-minded person, and we're ultimately there for the same reason, so the part always ends up getting changed."
For more behind the scenes content from Red Bull Holden Racing Team, watch Red Bull's The Science of Supercars.
from WWOS https://wwos.nine.com.au/motorsport/jamie-whincup-red-bull-holden-racing-team-behind-the-scenes-bathurst-1000-exclusive/f69128fc-95d6-4b70-bcba-f55e33812bd8
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