Can Red Bull break own world record? "Not likely"
- GPblog.com
Red Bull Racing's pit crew is the best in Formula 1. In recent seasons, the Austrian racing stable has won the DHL Pitstop Award each time. Moreover, Red Bull holds the world record. Whether they can improve that time further? Jonathan Wheatley doubts it, but at the same time he does not rule it out.
Indeed, Red Bull's team manager knows that breaking the time of 1.82 seconds, from the 2019 Brazilian GP, will be an incredibly difficult task. Midway through the 2021 season, the FIA tightened the rules around pit stops. This was due to fears that teams, in their quest for even faster pitstops, would lose sight of safety, creating potentially dangerous situations.
There is now a mandatory minimum reaction time. That makes it very difficult to put down pit stops faster than two seconds. "Whether we can still beat the world record? It is possible, but not likely," Wheatley stated at De Telegraaf. "Although I think our crew is still capable of it. Our first pit stop of the year in Bahrain was impressively fast, but Max thought there was a problem and waited a while. We can still be super fast."
Ferrari has pit stops well in hand
After three Grands Prix, Ferrari is generally the best in terms of pit stops. In the pitstop standings, the Italians are on 88 points, where Red Bull has collected 74 so far. Number three Alpine follows close behind with 46 points. McLaren is last with three points. The fastest pit stop of 2023 was delivered by Ferrari in 2.10 seconds in Saudi Arabia on Charles Leclerc.