The designs of a new breathing aid developed by engineers at the Mercedes F1 team, University College London (UCL), and clinicians at UCL Hospital have been made freely available to support the global response to Covid-19. It's the latest development in Formula 1’s Project Pitlane effort to help fight coronavirus.

The Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) devices, which help coronavirus patients with lung infections to breathe more easily, were developed by engineers at the Mercedes team and University College London (UCL), and clinicians at UCL Hospital after a round-the-clock effort to reverse engineer a device that could be manufactured rapidly by the thousands.

It took fewer than 100 hours from the initial meeting to production of the first device.

And after patient evaluations at UCLH and across sister hospitals in the London area, the device received regulatory approval last week. An order for up to 10,000 has now been placed by the British National Health Service, and the Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains technology centre in Brixworth – the facility where the F1 team’s highly successful power units are developed and built – is now building 1,000 devices per day.

READ MORE: UK-based F1 teams unite around ‘Project Pitlane’ to assist with ventilator production