The absence of Pit Start times for Leg 12 reveals some editing "magic":
- To lay the groundwork, we know the clock on St Patrick's Cathedral is accurate. When Joel/Garrett check in at the end of Leg 11, the clock shows 5:40pm, matching up with the sun/shadow angles for that time. The clock also shows Rob/Corey finishing their mat chat at 4:20pm, while Greg/John check in at around 4:30pm and chat until 4:50pm.
- For the finale, we see teams boarding a United Airlines flight in Ireland (the United aircraft and an Irish/English bilingual airport sign are in the same shot).
- United has four flights a day leaving Dublin, leaving at 9:20am (for Newark), 11:25am (for Chicago), 12:15pm (for Washington DC), and 1:35pm (for Newark). From deductions on the
Transport Thread, we know teams took the 9:20am flight on the morning of Fri 7 Jul.
- Theoretically, teams should be released early that morning to make the flight. Joel/Garrett are released with a clear shot of the cathedral clock showing 4:55 (am or pm). But that's an awful lot of people to be leisurely walking around the park at 4:55am, isn't it?
- When teams get in their taxis, we have a shot of an open
Prime Pizza, which should be open only from 4pm to midnight. To add to this, we get a glimpse of the clock in Joel/Garrett's taxi showing 17:07. But a late afternoon Pit Start would have teams miss all United flights leaving that day, so...
- This means that after teams checked in to the Pit Stop on Wed 5 Jul, they returned to St Patrick's Park in the afternoon the next day (Thu 6 Jul) to film "fake" departure shots, but didn't actually go to the airport until the day after, on the morning of Fri 7 Jul.Sneaky sneaky!
