Red Bull marks 11 pivotal pit stops as F1's fastest crews keep rewriting the record books

Red Bull charts the stops that defined two decades

Red Bull Racing has published a retrospective naming the 11 most influential pit stops in the team's history since its 2005 debut, written by Matt Clayton and arranged chronologically from 2006 to 2025. The first entry is David Coulthard's smooth stop at the 2006 Monaco Grand Prix, which helped him finish third after Jarno Trulli's Toyota expired, giving the young team its maiden podium in Coulthard's 200th race start. ¹

The list continues with Sebastian Vettel's 2010 Abu Dhabi stop, which produced the fastest pit lane entry-to-exit time of the race at 20.061 seconds and helped make him the team's first world champion in only its sixth season. Red Bull Racing also highlights the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix, where Vettel's final stop on lap 42 put him ahead of team-mate Mark Webber against instruction from the pit wall, and Webber's 2013 United States Grand Prix stop of 1.923 seconds, which the team says was the first in F1 history to break the two-second barrier. ¹

Later entries include Max Verstappen's 1.82-second stop at the 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix, his faultless lap 34 stop at the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix on the way to victory, the aggressive double undercut at the 2021 United States Grand Prix that preserved his championship lead, Sergio Pérez's early switch to intermediates at the 2022 Monaco Grand Prix, and Verstappen's win from 10th on the grid at the 2022 Hungarian Grand Prix, where the team had the four fastest stops of the race. A bonus entry covers the 2021 Abu Dhabi title decider, where Verstappen pitted from second under a late safety car while Lewis Hamilton stayed out, setting up a last-lap pass for his first world championship. ¹

The most recent inclusion is the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix, where Verstappen took pole by 0.012 seconds and stayed ahead of McLaren through a lap 21 head-to-head pit stop that saw the cars return to the track side by side. Red Bull Racing notes that race proved to be the only non-McLaren victory in the opening six rounds of 2025. ¹

The record book has since moved on

While Red Bull Racing's retrospective celebrates a team benchmark, the outright record now belongs elsewhere, though the outlets disagree on where. According to f1radioreplay.com, McLaren's 1.80-second stop for Lando Norris at the 2023 Qatar Grand Prix is the fastest pit stop ever officially recorded in Formula 1, eclipsing the 1.82-second mark Red Bull set for Verstappen at the 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix, which had stood for four years. theF1db.com, however, describes Red Bull's stop at the 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix as a 1.80-second effort and calls it the current record, so the exact 2019 figure and the identity of the record holder remain stated differently between the two sources. ¹²⁴

Whichever figure is accepted, that pace sits at the end of a long technical evolution. theF1db.com traces the path from hand-operated wheel braces in the sport's early decades, when a tyre change could take 30 seconds or more, through the pneumatic wheel gun of the early 1980s, the refuelling era from 1994 to its 2010 ban, and the modern sub-two-second stop that followed. theF1db.com records that once refuelling was outlawed in 2010, fastest stops fell from around 3.0 to 3.5 seconds that year to sub-2.3-second territory for top teams by 2016. ²

2025: McLaren's single-stop speed, Ferrari's season award

RacingNews365 reports that McLaren claimed the fastest pit stop of the 2025 season, a 1.91-second stop for Oscar Piastri at the Italian Grand Prix, with the team also posting matching 1.94-second stops for both drivers in Hungary to hold the three fastest single stops of the year. Red Bull locked out fourth to sixth through Yuki Tsunoda, Ferrari seventh to ninth via Charles Leclerc, and Williams completed the top 10 with a 2.02-second stop for Alex Albon in the Abu Dhabi season finale. ⁶

The single-stop honours did not match the season-long prize. f1radioreplay.com reports that Ferrari won the 2025 DHL Fastest Pit Stop Award, which is decided on the number of quick, clean stops accumulated across every race weekend rather than one outlier, describing Ferrari's win as a break in Red Bull's recent run atop the award. ⁴

At the other end of the timing sheets, RacingNews365 reports Oliver Bearman suffered the two slowest stops of 2025, a 29.04-second stop at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and a 28.5-second stop in Monaco a week later, both for Haas and both more than 10 seconds slower than the third-worst stop of the year, an 18.54-second stop for Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari at the São Paulo Grand Prix. ⁶

How a modern pit stop is built

Red Bull Racing's own explainer, also by Matt Clayton, details the choreography behind a contemporary stop: a crew of 20 to 22 meets the car, with three members per wheel covering the gun, wheel removal and fitting, separate front and rear jack operators, and a traffic light man releasing the car on instruction from a controller monitoring the pit lane. Wheel guns signal the jack operators once each wheel is secured, and unsafe releases can draw a five-second penalty or, in egregious cases, a drive-through penalty. The team notes F1 regulations require each driver to use two different tyre compounds in a dry race, making at least one stop mandatory. ⁷

The same explainer records the competitive payoff: Red Bull Racing has won the DHL Fastest Pit Stop Award seven times, consecutively from 2018 to 2024, peaking in 2020 when it says the team recorded the fastest single stop in 15 of the 17 races. The explainer also covers undercut and overcut strategy and the role of safety cars in creating cheaper stops. ⁷

The 2026 season opens with new benchmarks

The 2026 season began at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne in March, with Formula 1's official site reporting new technical regulations in effect and a reshaped tyre spec with narrower rubber on the same 18-inch rims. The fastest single stop of the new season so far, according to f1radioreplay.com, is Mercedes' 2.17-second stop for George Russell at the season opener, with Ferrari's best coming at the Chinese Grand Prix at 2.29 seconds; on early-season consistency Ferrari leads its standings ahead of McLaren, Red Bull, Racing Bulls and Mercedes. ⁵⁴

Formula 1's site has also been marking a Melbourne milestone, noting 2026 is the 30th year the city has hosted the Australian Grand Prix, which moved from Adelaide for the 1996 season opener. Its retrospective records moments from Damon Hill's win in the first Melbourne race through to Lando Norris's rain-affected 2025 victory, and its pre-event briefing lists a pit stop time loss at Albert Park of 19.30 seconds including 2.5 seconds stationary. ³⁵