EIt’s like Halley’s Comet. In Austria we saw something that is seen every so often, a mistake on the part of the Red Bull team. They have been winning the Pit Stop Award given by F1 for six consecutive years at the end of the season to the best team in the pit stops, which makes them the absolute kings in that field.
But it is also true that they have been with zero pressure, where they could be calm when they made the stops, because even if they failed, they had such a large margin of time that they still won the race. And when there is no pressure, there are no failures either, or, at least, they are camouflaged among the victories.
This year, the Milton Keynes-based team cannot walk, because they no longer dominate as they did. Equality is maximum and for the first time since 2021, they see how errors are penalized, which is normal in the maximum competition. And in the Austrian GP Race, in the only important moment in Verstappen’s last pit stop, the left rear wheel didn’t go in properly, they had a bad stop and Lando Norris, who saw his career as lost, re-entered the fight, which ended fatefully.
Going for the seventh consecutive
Because of one failure you cannot say that they are bad, but it has been shown that you can compete against them, although they are still the best mechanics. This season, They continue to be leaders in the constructors’ championship, the drivers’ championship and even in the best pit stops.where they have a significant advantage over the second.
This classification is distributed a little unfairly, since It only values the best stop of each team in the racesregardless of whether they have had an error and the energy drink brand always usually has the fastest stop of the weekend, because its mechanics are among the best on the grid.
Maximum equality, but the best is…
Really, what makes the difference and can give you many points is the constancy. And the thing is that the Great Circus is more of a long-distance marathon and, although a mistake penalizes, a season is very long, increasingly longer, and where we have to pay more attention to see who has the best pit stop team is in the average of time of the entire season and in that, Red Bull continues to dominate despite Austria’s mistake, because it was their only mistake of the season.
Classification of average pit stop time by teams:
- Red Bull: 2.46 seconds
- Ferrari: 2.67 seconds
- McLaren: 2.74 seconds
- Mercedes: 2.76 seconds
- Aston Martin: 2.77 seconds
- Alpine: 3.15 seconds
- Williams: 3.17 seconds
- Haas: 3.27 seconds
- RB: 4.65 seconds
- Sauber: 7.16 seconds
Obviously, the distances are minimal, because as reflected between the cars on the track, equality is maximum. This is one more factor that denotes that we are in a new stage in F1 and that the Austrians are notor they can sleep, because every point counts for them in the constructors’ world championship and these mistakes mean that you can lose many points and McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari start to smell blood.
Before the mistake at his home, the Red Bull Ring, heThe Austrian team did not drop below an average of 2.6 seconds on any circuit and in fact they had only been surpassed by Ferrari in Australia and by Mercedes in Imola. The war in the pit lane continues and a accumulation of errors or a very big problem can make you lose a lot, as is the case of Sauber, which had 4 grand prix with very bad stops or RB, which is one of the teams with the best mechanics. in the pits, but in Saudi Arabia they had a stop that was too slow.
