Master class participants got the chance to meet Atlassian Williams Racing personnel and get up close and personal with the FW47 race car at a fan zone held during
the Formula 1 Louis Vuitton Australian Grand Prix 2025.
In Formula One, not a second is wasted — even a few moments' delay can make the difference between winning a race and being left in the dust.
Just ask the Atlassian Williams Racing pit crew, who typically take just 2.5 seconds to change four tires when one of their race cars comes off a grand prix track. It's a marvel of coordination and choreography that requires hours of practice, planning and teamwork.
And, as a group of Komatsu Australia mechanics recently learned, it's not all that different from their day-to-day jobs. Although it takes substantially longer to change a tire on a haul truck or wheel loader, the art of maintaining and servicing a sophisticated piece of equipment boils down to the same basic concepts — and challenges.
The mechanics were part of the mechanics master class conducted in advance of the Formula 1 Louis Vuitton Australian Grand Prix 2025, held in Melbourne in March. As part of Komatsu's partnership with Atlassian Williams Racing, the Komatsu group was invited to meet with the racing team's lead mechanic, Ben Howard. They were chosen from five pilot branches across Australia participating in a program called PM100, which focuses on early careers as Komatsu technicians and highlights the importance of preventive maintenance in the organization.
“The crux of that conversation was: a pit stop in Formula One takes two and a half seconds to execute. But in reality, it's really more like two-and-a-half hours, because all of the work happens well in advance of the pit stop,” Todd Connolly, Vice President - Global Brand Transformation at Komatsu Australia, says. “So when the car pulls up, everyone knows exactly what job they have to do, what tool they have to have, and safety protocol is all well understood. They're all trying to work with each other.
They all have backups and there's someone else that steps in immediately so that two-and-a-half seconds is so well choreographed and so well planned.”
The mechanics — many of whom are early career — learned about timing, preparation and more in an event that was more dialogue than class. The technicians had a chance to ask Howard questions about the intricacies of keeping a pit crew team at the top of its game. In turn, Howard was able to learn from participants about the day-to-day of a technician in Australia, where the country is largely unoccupied, and worksites may be out in remote areas far away from any major city.
A Komatsu machine out in the field may have a little bit longer than two-and-a-half seconds. Komatsu machines are designed to endure harsh conditions and a single repair could take hours — or even weeks. Time can still be of the essence, as quick repairs may be needed to fix an issue before it grinds work to a halt.
“F1 Cars are the same as a large piece of equipment. If you don’t service it right, the vehicle will stop, and therefore the operation stops,” says Andy Wiggan, the General Manager – Service at Komatsu Australia who organized the master class. Both Atlassian Williams Racing and Komatsu have a team working on the machine physically, and then another team working behind the scenes, providing remote support for unfamiliar issues.
Komatsu machines, like the FW47 used by Atlassian Williams drivers Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz, are complex, performance-built machines, but are designed to make efficient, accessible machine repairs possible.
And a big commonality: continuous maintenance keeps the machines running and able to perform at maximum performance capacity. Maintenance isn’t just repairs, it involves preventative maintenance to save machines from catastrophic failures down the line.
While the grand prix itself is just one day, a race weekend may be three or four days in total. The grand prix may be the main event, but there are a series of practices, during which time the car is assessed for any issues after its transport to that race, and minor adjustments are made to get it ready for race day. There are even practices, called team pit stop practices, that are just for pit crew teams to test their readiness.
These are technicians that come to a motorsports team after years of training.
Because of some of the extreme locations a Komatsu technician may be sent to, there needs to be similar preparation and rehearsal. In the field they may not have reliable access to certain components, requiring quick thinking to come up with a solution. And, fellow technicians and remote support staff may be needed to troubleshoot complex issues.
“Everything comes back to collaboration,” Connolly says. That sense of collaboration and teamwork was the highlight of the master class weekend. After seeing how the teams communicated with each other, Wiggan says he was approached by some technicians saying they wanted to work toward being a service technician in the PM100 program. “That’s really good to have that ambition to be in these key roles,” he says.
Komatsu technicians are spread across major cities of Australia: Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Cairns, and these places are far spread out.
This event gave the PM100 technicians a chance to meet and learn not just from Ben Howard, but from each other. After the event, many have stayed in touch, and can offer each other tips, advice or just a conversation with someone on the same journey as them.
“Typically, in that career level, they won’t actually meet unless they meet somewhere, at a training, and typically then, it’s separated east to west,” Wiggan says. “But I’ve chatted with the technicians and schedulers that attended, and they’re just really glad they have someone in Perth, for example, to chat with and kind of draw on their experiences.”
The Komatsu and Atlassian Williams Racing partnership was built on fostering the next generation of talent. The Mechanics Masterclass is one of several ways that spirit is being brought into the workforce, encouraging early career Komatsu employees to learn and grow.
