How F1’s 2022 rules revamp has shaken up the pitstop arms race

“Box this lap, box this lap, please confirm.”

After a reply “box this lap, confirm” and a brief squeeze of acceleration coming out of the right-hand corner which forms the Hungaroring’s pit entry, Daniel Ricciardo hits the brakes and downshifts before thumbing the pit limiter button on his steering wheel, bringing his speed down to a steady 80km/h.

Decked out in orange suits and powder-blue helmets, the McLaren crew awaits in precise positions, hoping their accuracy is reciprocated. Luckily, Ricciardo is no stranger to this. Using the marker board on his left as a guide, he slows and swings the McLaren MCL36 right before pivoting back left into the outlined pit box, grazing the yellow arrow above the front jack with the tip of the car’s nose.

The 21-strong crew know their jobs. Three are on each corner of the car (wheel on, wheel off and the gun man); two each end (the jackman and a spare), two steady the car and two are in place for any front-wing adjustments or to clear debris; and one stands to make sure the pitlane is clear to avoid any unsafe release.

The stop goes by without a hitch. 2.26s later, Ricciardo has a fresh set of medium tyres and is back on his way. In the time it takes Usain Bolt to run 100m, they could complete the same turnaround four times. It may not be the fastest stop of the race – Red Bull goes 0.07s faster serving Sergio Perez with the quickest stop of the season so far – but it’s another successful operation from one of F1’s slickest pitcrews.

Pitstops have been a key point of attention for McLaren in recent years. During his tenure as team principal, Andreas Seidl has emphasised the importance of operational skills and helped establish McLaren as one of the crews to beat.

“It takes time to get on top of the challenge of a pitstop in F1,” he says. “It obviously involves the crew, but also the equipment like the wheel guns for doing the stops, and a lot of the car hardware like the hubs, nuts, brake ducts, and so on. We invested a lot of energy, especially over the winter, in order to work on all these areas to get to a place to be competitive and as quick as the best.”

The McLaren crew practice a pitstop, a key human performance battleground in F1

Photo by: Erik Junius

The work has paid off. McLaren can currently claim to be the second-quickest team in the pits as per the standings supplied by DHL, F1’s logistics supplier, which sponsors an award for the fastest stops over a season. Only Red Bull has been quicker than McLaren on more occasions.

Back in the days of refuelling, pitstop length was dictated by the amount of fuel that went in and the speed with which the rig could be attached and then disengaged. If there was a fumble getting a wheel on or off, it mattered little given the fuel rig would be taking between seven and 10 seconds to deliver its payload. But the ban on refuelling meant tyre changes became a key differentiator between teams, and a technological and human performance arms race ensued.

Teams went to remarkable lengths to chase sub-2s stops, sending mechanics to boot camps, designing specialist equipment, and evolving new procedures. Red Bull set the record at Interlagos in 2019 when it turned Max Verstappen’s car around in just 1.82s. Adding together its fastest four corners ever recorded during practice at the factory, Red Bull reckons a 1.4s stop was possible…

"The impact on consistency this year has been the biggest change. Even the best teams have seen some very slow stops. While the headline speed is what we see, the biggest impact on strategy is the inconsistency" Charlie Hooper

It was a process which took thousands of hours of training to refine, all in pursuit of mere tenths and thousandths of a second. Many of those gains have now been erased. The overhaul of F1’s regulations for 2022 made the cars heavier, part of which is a result of the move to 18-inch wheels. Each rim is around 3kg heavier due to the greater amount of metal, plus the new (mandatory) wheel covers, making them even more cumbersome to move during stops. The return of ground-effect aerodynamics has also enforced some changes, since cars now run lower to the ground.

“We had to review our jack designs to ensure we could lift to the correct height, especially on the rear,” says Charlie Hooper, McLaren’s director of car operations and engineering, tasked with overseeing the crew each time it springs into action. “If you just used the old jack, it would be very difficult to lift and would be very high off the ground. We had to ensure that the car weight – to the jackmen – felt the same and manageable.”

This has contributed to the stops slowing down to around 2.5s, but it’s not the only factor. During last season the FIA launched a clampdown to remove automated systems such as sensors used to confirm a wheel had been attached properly; it was feared such systems were being used to shortcut stops at the cost of safety.

When pitstops go wrong, people can get hurt: when Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari was released prematurely during the 2018 Bahrain GP, the car clipped mechanic Francesco Cigarini, who was left with a double leg fracture; at the Nurburgring in 2013 an unsuspecting FOM cameraman was hospitalised by the right-rear wheel of Mark Webber’s Red Bull, which detached as Webber left the box.

Francesco Cigarini suffered a broken leg in a Ferrari pitstop at the 2018 Bahrain GP

Photo by: Sutton Images

One of the main motivations for the FIA stepping in last year was the suspicion some teams were trying to game the system through these automated sensors – that the systems were being used to anticipate when each wheel was tightened and give the ‘go’ signal fractionally early. Seidl says the clampdown “finally ensured that everyone was playing to the same regulations”, even if it removed the sub-2s stops some found so impressive.

Teams now prioritise consistency rather than chasing peak speeds, yet the changes to the cars have made mistakes more frequent. Even a well-drilled operation like McLaren has slipped up at times, notably with Ricciardo in Canada as McLaren tried to double-stack its cars and a crew member arrived late. More startling was Lando Norris’s car being dropped when the rear jack failed in practice at Silverstone.

“The impact on consistency this year has been the biggest change across the whole grid,” says Hooper. “Even the best teams have seen some very slow stops this year. While the headline speed is what we see, the actual biggest impact on strategy is the inconsistency.

“A lot of this comes around from the heavier wheels and tyres, but also the change in geometry of the common drum design across the grid. Speeds will increase, but it will be difficult to achieve the ultimate pace seen in the old set of regulations, along with the FIA ensuring correctly that we have safe stops.”

The key to finding this consistency may be practice, practice, practice. But Andrew Shovlin, trackside engineering director at Mercedes, says that tighter limits on curfews this year actually make it harder to find time to rehearse pitstops.

“Getting the cars together is a priority,” he explains. “One of the big issues was actually getting all of that work into the weekend, and one of the first things to drop is pitstop practice. It’s an area we’re working on. It’s not the thing that’s holding us back at the moment – that’s the car – but it’s always a parallel project.”

While we may be unlikely to see pitstops dip below two seconds in the near future, there are still other areas of technological exploration. Alpine sporting director Alan Permane reveals teams are looking at electric pit gun technology “for all sorts of reasons: for eco reasons, for savings on freight, and just moving forward.”

He adds: “I think we’re a little way away on that, honestly, to retain the same performance that we have now. But essentially, what we have now is what we had last year with a bigger wheel.”

Bigger and heavier wheels plus wheel covers have been a key factor in slowing pitstops down with the 2022 F1 cars

Photo by: Mercedes

While the 2s barrier may never be breached again, this doesn’t mean teams put less energy or focus into making stops quick.

“It’s a sub-competition in its own right really,” says AlphaTauri technical director Jody Egginton. “It’s motivation. If you don’t deliver good stops, if the guys can’t deliver the race stops they do in practice, it upsets them. It’s another outlet for the competitiveness we all show.”

"If the guys can’t deliver the race stops they do in practice, it upsets them. It’s another outlet for the competitiveness" Jody Egginton

It’s not just the drivers who are ultra-competitive: pitcrews take pride in their work and are determined to beat one another. But what underpins the speed isn’t enthusiasm and competitiveness, it’s process. For Hooper, there are “no big secrets” that have made his McLaren crew one of the best in the business.

“It’s about being open and honest with the crew in reviewing, focusing on our weaknesses and understanding how and where to improve,” he says. “We focus on constant technical improvements using the crew feedback for both performance and consistency, balancing injuries versus practice quantity, and ensuring the crew is in the best shape possible come Sunday.”

Will F1 teams ever be able to get back to a sub-2s pitstop?

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images