Episode description
Pit Lane Light-Pulse: Reappraising the Choi Method: Part 2
An interview with Niran Saengkaew, Khlong Toei Automotive
“No. I didn’t see much need for the Choi Method at first. I mean, we mostly worked on scooters. Very different situation than the grav-racers. No pit lane, no need for those spur of the moment changes to tires or hydraulic pressure or whatever they had going on. I was quite happy to get a scooter in. Chat to the man. Get out my tools, figure out what needed to be done over an hour or so. And the clients liked that too! I got to know a lot of good people that way. There’s a woman who used to bring her scooter in every six weeks for a tune-up and while I was checking the bike, she’d get out a little paint pot, put some new detail on the body of the thing. It was good.
But then Dtào saw Liana Choi talking about her method at some conference. I think the racers had come through that week, and so they were making a big thing of it. Maybe a year before she went. He came in to the workshop, almost glowing with excitement, and made the case, and I’ve always stuck by him so I thought: What’s the harm.
And there was something funny about it too, at first. You see the pit crews at the races perform the Method and the crowd roars and it’s all so… sincere! And here we are, seeing maybe 10 scooters a day in our workshop next to the outdoor pool. It was like a joke, like a good joke. What does the Choi Method even LOOK like in a place like that?
We weren’t as fast as the pros. Never got as fast as the pros. But the difference didn’t really matter. The first time we tried it, got all the tools together, we managed to do the works in about forty eight seconds. The first time! The day before, I’d done the same job without the Method and it had taken me an hour and ten minutes.
So that was that. If you can cut down the time by that much, why would you look back? That’s what Dtáo said. We worked on 350 scooters that second day. Why would you look back? I know why. But I can’t answer “how.”
The lady with the paint pot? Oh, I’d need to check the books. I don’t know. Let me see here. Yes, last week. She came in last week. Appointment time twelve seconds.”