How is a Formula 1 pit stop so fast? It is a combination of practice, teamwork, and technology. The fastest ever pit stop recorded during a race was 1.8 seconds and it was achieved by the McLaren team during the Qatar race in 2024.
What is the purpose of a Formula 1 pit stop? They have to change the car’s tires, stabilize it, adjust the aerodynamics, and repair or replace anything that is broken. They have to replace the tires because the speed and the downforce of the cars mean there is a lot of friction and they get very hot and wear down very quickly. You need a lot of friction because you get more speed by being able to push on the ground more. I thought that they refueled the car as well, but that hasn’t happened since 2010. F1 cars used to be allowed to refuel and teams used this to make their cars faster. Fuel is obviously heavy and if you can refuel three times during a race, you only have to carry one third of the fuel. That means, if another team are refueling only twice, they will be carrying more fuel and the time you would lose in the pit stop, you would make up by having a lighter and faster car. All of that changed in 2010 when refueling was banned. There were two reasons for that. The first was a move towards being more efficient. If cars have to carry all of the fuel they need for a race, the teams would invest more money into making the cars more efficient so that they could complete the race using less fuel. The second reason was that refueling at speed was dangerous and there were several fires during pit stops.
Still, even without needing to refuel, it is incredible that a F1 pit crew can change a car’s tires in less than two seconds. How do they do it? There are 20 people working on a pit crew and each one of them has a specific job. There are two people who work the front jack. This jacks the front of the car up so the wheels are off the ground. One person works it and one has the spare. There are two people who work the rear jack. One spare. There are four tire gunners that remove the nut from the wheel so it can be taken off, then put the nut back on the new wheel. There are four people that take the old tire off and four people that put the new tire on. There are two people, one on each side of the car, that hold the car to stop it wobbling on the jacks. They also have side jacks that they can use if the front or the rear of the car is damaged. There are two people to adjust the front wings to alter the aerodynamics. There is one person watching the pit land and always one person holding a fire extinguisher. There is one man who holds the red green stop go light.
What happens? The first part is the car arrives. The driver enters the pit lane, slows down to the speed limit, which is 80 km/h, pulls into their pit and has to stop exactly on their mark. Drivers practice pitting as well as all the pit crews. As the car is stopping, the front and rear jacks are inserted and the car is lifted. They are not allowed to have any mechanical parts, so it is all bodyweight and leverage. The tire gunners follow the car in with their guns and they usually have laser sights so they can hit their mark. They are already fitting them over the tire nuts as the car is being jacked up. The nut is removed, the gunners pull back, and the tire removers pull the old tire off. These tires are hot, so they wear gloves. At almost the same time, the new tire people slot the new tires back on and the tire gunner is already aiming for the center to redo the nut as the wheel’s slide on. While this is going on, the stabilizers hold the car and the aerodynamic people make adjustments. The jack people drop the car and get out of the way. The pit watcher makes sure the pit lane is clear and once everyone is done, the red green light guy’s light turns green and the car leaves.
The team practice thousands of times on a mockup so that they are perfect, but there are a few technological aids that help them. The first is the tire nuts. They only have three screws on each nut, so they come off in only three turns. The wheel axels are tapered to make it easier to put the wheel and the nut back on. The tire nut guns use hydraulic power and they automatically switch from anti-clockwise to clockwise after the wheel has been removed so the gunner doesn’t have to do anything. Finally, once the tire is done, the gunner can press a button to send a signal to the red green guy’s light. They used to signal with their hands, but that slows the process down. Another technological design is the jack at the front of the car. It has a swivel joint so that the jack person can get out of the way of the car while it is still jacked up. It also has a quick release handle so that the jacker doesn’t have to waste time lowering the car. The red green light receives a signal from all four tire gunners and from the front and rear jackers. The pit watcher has an override button in case there is another car in the pit lane, but if the red green light receives the six signals and there is no override, the light will change to green and the driver will drive.
The speed is incredibly fast these days. The first pit stops were in the 1930s and they took closer to a minute. Still, faster and faster pit times increases the pressure on the pit crew and the driver, leading to more mistakes. There are some ideas that set pit times might be safer. And this is what I learned today.
Photo by Adriaan Greyling: https://www.pexels.com/photo/f1-ferrarri-car-on-race-track-18737972/
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