During every Formula One race broadcast, you will hear the “box, box” radio call that summons a driver to a pit stop.
You will see a swarm of 22 (or so) people engulf the car, hear a dzzzzt dzzzzt if it’s a really good stop — extra dzzzzts if it’s not — and then you will see taillights.
About a second separates the fastest and slowest pit crews when times are averaged across an entire season, but every team is capable of changing four tires in 2.6 seconds or less on any given day. Their procedures vary a little; their equipment may vary a lot.
What doesn’t vary is the precise teamwork required to pull it off.
Story continues below advertisement
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Advertisement
“Including the driver, there are 22 people that have to have a fantastic two seconds,” said Jonathan Wheatley, who as Red Bull sporting director oversees the pit crew with the fastest average time. “Not a great hour or 90 minutes. They have to have a fantastic two seconds. And that’s where a great pit stop comes from.”
Here’s how those two (or so) seconds happen, told with the help of more than two dozen members of the Haas and Red Bull teams.
What we see:
Pit road before the rush
Unless something has gone terribly wrong, the call to box isn’t a surprise.
Each track’s pit lane is a bit different, but it’s always near the starting grid. Garage positions are assigned based on team finish order in the constructors’ championship the previous season. Most of the time, the team with the most points gets the garage closest to one end of the pit lane, the second-place team is next and so on.
Pit lane graphic
Circuit of
the Americas
Austin,
Texas
Pit lane
entry
Starting grid
Circuit of
the Americas
Austin, Texas
Pit lane
entry
Starting grid
Circuit of
the Americas
Austin, Texas
Pit lane
entry
Starting grid
Circuit of
the Americas
Austin, Texas
Pit lane
entry
Starting grid
Each team has two cars that pit at least once every race, and the same pit crew services both.
Pit crew members, called mechanics, watch the race on TVs in the garage, but they also hear team radio chatter and are alerted when a pit stop is coming.
Each mechanic has a specific role, and the number of people working during any given stop depends on what needs to be done in addition to changing the tires.
Two people lift the car on front and rear jacks. Two others stand ready with backup jacks just in case.
People on each side of the cockpit steady the car while it’s in the air.
Three people change out the wheel in each “corner” of the car — front right, left rear, etc.
A “wheel-off” mechanic grabs the old tire, and a “wheel-on” mechanic slides the new one into place.
The wheel-gun man — most pit crew mechanics are men — loosens and tightens the wheel nut.
At most stops, two mechanics adjust the front wing flap angle.
Other team members act as spotters, perform other minor car maintenance and stand by with fire extinguishers, backup equipment and extra tools and parts.
The chief mechanic oversees it all, with help from a car controller or other team official, and the driver plays an important role as well.
Behind the scenes:
Day jobs
TV cameras often show pit crews sitting in the garage, but that is some of the only sitting around these folks do the entire weekend.
Unlike their counterparts in NASCAR, Formula One pit crews are not brawny athletes recruited to make race-day cameos. Because the series limits the number of staff at each race, pit crew members are chosen from among the people who would be working in the garage anyway: mechanics, technicians, IT specialists, engineers.
Pit stops — including practice, prep and training — make up a small slice of their jobs.
NASCAR and Indy Car comparison
More people, less to do
Formula One pit crews are much larger than those in other series, and they don’t add fuel. NASCAR allows just five people “over the wall” to service a car; IndyCar allows six.*
Formula One
Average
2023
* NASCAR and IndyCar allow an extra person to clear the windshield/aeroscreen. Pit stop times in those series are unofficial.
Sources: DHL, IndyCar, Stewart-Haas Racing, NASCAR,
Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet.
More people, less to do
Formula One pit crews are much larger than those in other series, and they don’t add fuel. NASCAR allows just five people “over the wall” to service a car; IndyCar allows six.*
Average 2023
Formula One
* NASCAR and IndyCar allow an extra person to clear the
windshield/aeroscreen. Pit stop times in those series are unofficial.
Sources: DHL, IndyCar, Stewart-Haas Racing, NASCAR,
Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet.
More people, less to do
Formula One pit crews are much larger than those in other series, and they don’t add fuel. NASCAR allows just five people “over the wall” to service a car; IndyCar allows six.*
Average 2023
Formula One
* NASCAR and IndyCar allow an extra person to clear the windshield/aeroscreen.
Pit stop times in those series are unofficial.
Sources: DHL, IndyCar, Stewart-Haas Racing, NASCAR, Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet.
At Red Bull, a large team of more than 1,000 people, anyone among the trackside crew who wants to ratchet up their stress level can try out for the pit crew.
At 250-person Haas, the only American-owned team and the smallest team on the grid, everyone in the garage crew plays a role in what team manager Pete Crolla describes as “the most adrenaline-fueled, high-blood-pressure point” in the weekend.
Haas team principal Guenther Steiner said the work can be thankless, especially because bungled stops often make better television than smooth ones.
“It’s not an easy task, because if you do a good job, nobody will realize it,” he said. “You just did your job, you know?”
Icon Get ready
What we see:
Getting ready for action
With 40 seconds warning (at Haas) or 30 seconds (at Red Bull), the crew gets ready.
They wear helmets, gloves and fire-resistant suits. Even though cars haven’t refueled during races since 2009, fires still happen, and tires and other car parts routinely get hot enough to burn skin.
The wheel-ons grab new tires that are still swaddled in heated blankets. Warmer tires have more grip, so teams are allowed to heat them in the garage to as high as 158 degrees Fahrenheit (70 Celsius).
The crew hears another warning when the car is 15 or 20 seconds from the pit box. That’s when the wheel-ons dump the heat blankets and the crew runs out to wait.
“Your heart is pretty much racing by this point already from the run out, let alone the adrenaline and the nerves,” said Callum Adams, a Red Bull wheel gun operator.
Within moments, the crew hears the car coming.
Pavement marks
Pavement marks
The driver stays at the pit road speed limit for as long as possible before hitting the brakes.
At most tracks, that is 50 mph (80 kph); it is 37 mph (60 kph) at a few with very tight pit lanes, such as Monaco.
At the pit box, he aims to stop at marks that were laid down by the team and measured to the millimeter. A sign called a lollipop hangs above where a front tire should land.
It is the trickiest part of a pit stop for a driver, the four Haas and Red Bull drivers said through team spokespeople.
“You want to get from whatever the pit limiter is to zero in as shortest time as possible, all while hitting your marks — not stopping too long or too short,” said Kevin Magnussen of Haas.
“In every 10 pit stops, I’m doing it perfectly once, or maybe twice,” said his teammate, Nico Hulkenberg. “It’s a very narrow box, and there’s around 20 to 25 members of the team standing there. It’s not an easy thing to do.”
If a driver hits the marks perfectly, the car will tap the front jack and stop inches from the noses of the waiting pit crew. If he misses slightly, the crew loses precious time adjusting. If he misses badly, a mechanic could get hurt.
“[Your mechanics] fully trust you to do your part of the job in a pit stop,” Red Bull driver Sergio Pérez said. “Even when you come in a little too hot, they have confidence in you and stand their ground.”
As the car pulls in and stops, the rear jack man swoops in behind it.
A light in front of the driver glows red.
Behind the scenes:
Mixing speed and safety
Safety has to be paramount when trying to speed up an activity that puts people in the path of a nearly 2,000-pound racecar.
Wheatley, who has been performing or managing pit stops for 33 of his 56 years, knows this well.
More than two decades before he became Red Bull’s sporting director, he was front left wheel gun on the Benetton pit crew in 1994 during a pit stop at the German Grand Prix that could have altered Formula One history. At that time, cars could refuel at pit stops. At this one, gasoline from a fuel nozzle splashed onto the searing-hot car and ignited in a fireball on live TV.
“I can still today remember the heat that came out of that fire, and also that feeling,” Wheatley said. “The first thing I did was rip the safety goggles off because the air got so hot inside them.”
Thanks to fire suits and fire extinguishers, the only injuries were minor burns to three crew members and driver Jos Verstappen. It was three years before the birth of his son, Max, who clinched his third straight Formula One championship Oct. 7.
A less dramatic but still dangerous accident prompted Red Bull to rethink its pit stop equipment, Wheatley said. In 2013, an improperly secured wheel came off a Red Bull car in the pit lane and injured a cameraman. Afterward, the team analyzed “every single element of what could go wrong in a pit stop and tried to put an electronic process in place to stop that happening,” he said.
Some of the innovations made pit stops safer and faster. For example, high-tech wheel guns.
Wheel gun
What we see:
Wheel guns
Before the car has stopped — seriously, before the car has stopped — the four wheel gun operators loosen the wheel nuts.
Each wheel contains a single, central nut that stays attached, so a tire change is really a wheel change.
Wheel gun is considered to be the most difficult job on the pit crew, but it’s also the most coveted, said performance coach Sarah Harrington of Red Bull. “Everybody wants to be a gun man.”
Behind the scenes:
Gap between haves and have-nots
Formula One wheel guns are heavy, high-powered pneumatic wrenches that take a fraction of a second to loosen a nut.
Their torque is violent; hold one wrong and it can break your wrist, operators say.
The guns are also a window into the financial, technological and performance gulf between the top teams and some of the rest.
Italian company Paoli makes all Formula One wheel guns — as well as those for NASCAR, IndyCar and other series — but teams can customize them.
Guns used by Red Bull and other teams automatically switch directions from loosening to tightening with a trigger press. They are “intelligent,” sensing when a nut is secure.
Haas’s small-team budget historically has been much tighter, and its pit stop equipment is more basic.
“When you see a bad pit stop, it’s easy to blame the crew,” said driver Magnussen, “but much like the cars and driving them, the better equipment you have, the easier it is to drive. Our team are challenged because we don’t have as up-to-date equipment as the bigger teams.”
Operators of Haas’s “passive” guns have to manually toggle a switch to go from loosening to tightening, and they have to go by feel to determine whether a nut is fully secured. Those things consume fractions of seconds that traditionally high-dollar teams don’t have to sacrifice.
Wheel gun
A single nut holds each wheel on
the axle.
The gun mechanic slides a toggle to switch from loosening the old nut to
tightening
the new
one.
The gun socket fits precisely on the nut. Pulses of compressed air turn it.
The mechanic pushes the corner-complete button when the new wheel is secure.
Other teams’ guns toggle automatically with each
pull of the trigger.
A line carries the electronic signal that the job is done.
A single nut holds each wheel on the axle.
The gun mechanic slides a toggle to switch from loosening the old nut to
tightening
the new
one.
The gun socket fits precisely on the nut. Pulses of compressed air turn it.
The mechanic pushes the corner-complete button when the new wheel is secure.
Other teams’ guns toggle automatically with each pull of the trigger.
A line carries the electronic signal that the job is done.
A single nut holds each wheel on the axle.
The gun mechanic slides a toggle to switch from loosening the old nut to tightening the new one.
Haas team’s gun
The mechanic pushes the corner-complete button when the new wheel is secure.
The gun socket fits precisely on the nut. Pulses of compressed air turn it.
Other teams’ guns toggle automatically with each pull of the trigger.
Pulling the trigger starts the gun.
A line carries the electronic signal that the job is done.
A single nut holds each wheel on the axle.
Haas team’s gun
The mechanic pushes the corner-complete button when the new wheel is secure.
The gun mechanic slides a toggle to switch from loosening the old nut to tightening the new one.
Other teams’ guns toggle automatically with each pull of the trigger.
The gun socket fits precisely on the nut. Pulses of compressed air turn it.
Pulling the trigger starts the gun.
A line carries the electronic signal that the job is done.
“We’d love to be spending millions of dollars a year on pit stop equipment to make them the fastest, safest, most consistent pit stops we can,” Crolla said. “But we’ve got the equipment that we’ve got. We work to develop that within our own parameters.”
In 2021, the series instituted a cost cap in hopes of reining in the top teams and allowing the back of the pack to eventually catch up. The 2023 cap is $135 million.
Front jack
What we see:
Front jack
This is the scariest job, at least in the opinion of drivers.
“Front jack is the job you don’t want, in case you overshoot,” Max Verstappen said through a team spokesperson. (Here are examples of overshooting, by Lance Stroll in 2020 and Lewis Hamilton in 2021; neither mechanic was injured.)
“Would you want to stand in front of a driver that’s coming in at 60 kilometers an hour and wants to hit the jack that you’re holding?” asked Christian Horner, Red Bull team principal and a former driver. “I mean, you’ve got to have nerves of steel for that.”
Front jack man
When the car’s nose taps the front jack, the operator pushes the handle down to raise the car.
The platform goes down automatically after all corner-complete buttons have been pressed.
When the car’s nose taps the front jack, the operator pushes the handle down to raise the car.
The platform goes down automatically after all corner-complete buttons have been pressed.
When the car’s nose taps the front jack, the operator pushes the handle down to raise the car.
The platform goes down automatically after all corner-complete buttons have been pressed.
Haas front jack man Larry Ainley apparently has nerves of steel. He said he has never been knocked down — “not yet” — and that he “felt calm” even the first time a car came hurtling toward him. “We prepare for this a lot,” he said.
Behind the scenes:
Haas improvement
Pit stops have not been a Haas strength recently, but the team is trying to change that.
In the previous three seasons, Haas had the slowest average pit stop time on the grid, according to data from DHL, which awards a Fastest Pit Stop trophy each season.
Seasons average times
The fastest and the slowest
Average pit stop time for each team since 2018.
Alfa Romeo
Aston Martin
Alpha Tauri
Red Bull
2.63
Non-regular stops are not included.
Source: DHL.
The fastest and the slowest
Average pit stop time for each team since 2018.
Alfa Romeo
Aston Martin
Alpha Tauri
Red Bull
2.63
Non-regular stops are not included.
Source: DHL.
The fastest and the slowest
Average pit stop time for each team since 2018.
Alfa Romeo
Aston Martin
Alpha Tauri
Red Bull
2.63
Non-regular stops are not included.
Source: DHL.
However, when new aerodynamics rules forced a redesign of cars for 2022, Haas renewed a push for pit stop consistency, efficiency and, ideally, speed — although it didn’t come immediately.
As with most teams, pit stop times slowed last season as crews figured out the best way to wrangle larger tires onto the new cars. Last year, no Haas pit stop took less than three seconds.
This season, however, although the team has struggled with consistency, the crew has had some great performances, such as in Japan on Sept. 24 when four of its five stops took less than three seconds and, more importantly, were within 0.2 seconds of each other.
Team members largely credited two people for the time improvement: performance coach/physiotherapist Faith Atack-Martin and strategy engineer Faissal Fdil. The pair work together, poring over videos and data to detect the places where the crew can pick up tiny slivers of time.
Atack-Martin trains the crew on strength, core stability and mobility, which cuts down on injuries in their regular team roles in addition to making them fitter for pit stops. They learn strategies to better deal with stress and use visualization techniques to prime their minds and muscles for action.
“We’ve made a good improvement over the last year, considering the equipment we use isn’t the same specification as others,” Haas chief mechanic Toby Brown said, “and we know there is still more time to be found.”
Wheel-on, wheel-off
What we see:
Wheel-off, wheel-on
Wheel-off “is probably one of the easier jobs in pit stops,” Haas wheel-off Dane Woods said.
“But you sort of have to sacrifice yourself a little bit and get in the way of the car when it comes in,” he said. “You can lose a bit of time by being too far away from the car.”
The exchange is so quick and so tight that the wheel-on is usually pushing the old wheel out of his way, Adams said.
The wheel-on needs excellent hand-eye coordination to thread an awkwardly large wheel onto an axle in one smooth motion while the gun man is fitting the gun onto the nut. It’s especially tough to maneuver the rear wheels, which are 18 inches high, nearly 16 inches wide and weigh about 50 pounds each.
Wheel-on, wheel-off animation
3.
The wheel-on puts
the new wheel on.
1.
The wheel-gun
loosens the nut.
4.
After the new
wheel is on,
the wheel-gun
tightens the nut.
2.
The wheel-off removes
the used wheel.
3.
The wheel-on puts
the new wheel on.
1.
The wheel-gun
loosens the nut.
4.
After the new
wheel is on,
the wheel-gun
tightens the nut.
2.
The wheel-off removes
the used wheel.
3.
The wheel-on puts
the new wheel on.
1.
The wheel-gun
loosens the nut.
4.
After the new wheel
is on, the wheel-gun
tightens the nut.
2.
The wheel-off removes
the used wheel.
Max Verstappen said wheel-off is the position he would most like to try “to experience the adrenaline.” Pérez said his position of choice would be front right wheel-on. So Red Bull could be two-thirds of the way to an all-driver corner if they ever want to go that route.
Haas wheel-on David Stewart said the 12 people working the corners are so in tune with one another that they can sense problems without seeing them. “Even if it’s on one of the other corners,” he said, “you can feel that somewhere something has gone wrong.”
About a second after the gun man loosens the old wheel, he tightens the new one. He pushes a button on his gun that signals that the wheel is secure, and his corner’s job is done.
“You know a pit stop is good when you only hear two noises: the guns going off, and then the guns going on,” Fdil said.
You can hear it here, during McLaren’s record-setting 1.80-second stop last weekend in Qatar.
Wing flap adjust
Wing flap adjustment
During most pit stops, mechanics alter the car’s downforce.
As the wheels are being changed, two mechanics use drills to adjust the angle of the front wing flaps, providing more or less downforce. Adding downforce to the front makes a car more stable.
Wing flap adjust
Front flap adjuster
Adjustable
flap section
Front flap adjuster
Adjustable
flap section
Front flap adjuster
Adjustable
flap section
Mechanics may need to do other tasks as well, such as clearing debris from the side pod, swapping out the steering wheel or refilling an air bottle that helps the engine function. Anything out of the ordinary may chew up extra time. Replacing a damaged front wing, for example, typically takes nine seconds or more.
Behind the scenes:
Pit stop strategy
The reason to pit is to change the tires. The goal is consistency.
Every car is required to use at least two different tire compounds per race when the track is dry, so every car will at some point stop for new ones. (If it’s raining, cars can use wet-weather tires for the entire race.)
Deciding which tires to use and when to change them is like a game of chess, especially on tight tracks where passing is otherwise difficult. Team strategists weigh how speedy a tire will be with how quickly it will degrade, and they try to anticipate what their opponents might be planning.
Tires graphic
Pirelli makes all the tires and provides three slick options per race: durable hard ones, grippy soft ones or medium tires that split the difference.
Slick tires
Intermediate
Pirelli makes all the tires and provides three slick options per race among six possible compounds: durable hard ones, grippy soft ones or medium tires that split the difference.
Slick tires
Intermediate
Pirelli makes all the tires and provides three slick options per race among six possible compounds: durable hard ones, grippy soft ones or medium tires that split the difference.
Slick tires
Intermediate
One common ploy is called an “undercut,” which means a driver pits unexpectedly early and uses fresh tires to try to get ahead of a rival who will have to pit later. Another is an “overcut,” when a driver delays pitting, either to try to increase his lead while a rival is getting new tires or to ensure that, after he eventually pits, he will have newer tires for a late-race push.
Strategists try to time each pit stop so that the car can scoot back into the race in a gap with some free road ahead.
But to get the timing right, they need to know how long a pit stop is likely to take. That’s why every team principal, team manager and sporting director interviewed for this story emphasized consistency over speed.
“Doing one in 1.9 seconds isn’t necessarily going to win you the race, but if you can tell the strategist, ‘We can definitely do it in 2.4 seconds,’ they can make the gap on track,” said Andy Stevenson, sporting director at Aston Martin. “It’s no good if the strategist is calculating for a 2.4-second pit stop and you make a mistake and the car leaves in four seconds. Then your race is over.”
Release
What we see:
Release
After all four wheel guns have confirmed that their corners are complete, the jacks get an electronic signal to lower the car automatically.
After that, teams have different protocols, but a human is always responsible for releasing the car into the pit lane.
At Haas, that person is chief mechanic Brown.
Throughout a pit stop, he stands at the front of the car with a hold button. He can see all four corners, both jacks and the traffic coming down the lane. He has help from a spotter at the back of the car, but the decision to release the car from the pit box is his.
“If a pit stop goes well, I don’t have to do anything,” Brown said.
If he doesn’t press his hold button, the light in front of the driver turns green.
Then, Haas reserve driver Pietro Fittipaldi said, “you full throttle, dump the clutch, and then off you go.”
About this story
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMCxu9Gtqmihnqmys63CraCvnV9nfXN%2Fjp%2Bmq6Wloa5uu82eZKmhpKjBsLyMoZiaq12nsqV5wa6jpWc%3D