Thomas Moore, Health & Science Correspondent with SKY news brings this great story to light. The quick reactions of a Formula One pit team are being watched closely by medical workers at a hospital in Wales.

The high-speed choreography of Formula One pit stops could help save the lives of critically ill babies. Doctors and nurses at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, are being trained by the Williams pit crew in the hope of fine-tuning the resuscitation of premature newborn babies. The Formula One team is the slickest so far this season, changing four tyres in just two seconds.

Sky News was exclusively invited to the Williams HQ in Oxfordshire to watch the interaction between the medical team and the pit crew.

Dr Rachel Hayward, a neonatal care specialist at the hospital, approached the team after realising that vital seconds were being lost in treating babies with breathing problems. She told Sky News: “They said to us, ‘We are putting wheels on cars and you are saving lives. We can’t see what the analogy is’.

“And we said, ‘If your mechanic doesn’t put a bolt on a wheel correctly then you may lose your driver’s life on the first bend. If we don’t do something right in our resuscitation processes, we lose a baby’.”

The Williams team practises around 2,000 pit stops a season in the hope of shaving a few tenths-of-a-second from the tyre-change. Small mistakes can cost positions on the track. Gemma Fisher, a human-performance specialist at Williams, said: “That’s a lot of pressure to deal with.

“It’s a different pressure to what the doctors and nurses are dealing with at the hospital but it binds those people and builds that team ethic: even more so because they are in such a complex and stressful environment.”

To read more and watch the associated video, head here:  http://news.sky.com/story/1693193/f1-crew-helps-nurses-save-premature-babies