Red Bull unhappy with new pit rules
Formula 1’s fastest pitstops are set to be slowed down on safety grounds from the Hungarian Grand Prix after a clampdown by the FIA.
The governing body has addressed complaints that the stops of some teams are faster than can be achieved by following the current rules to the letter. The suggestion is that some stop procedures involve a higher degree of automation than was expected, and this has allowed teams to achieve record-breaking times.
F1’s technical regulations contain a reference to pitstops, which states that sensors must act passively. The new technical directive is intended to enforce this more rigidly.
From the 1 August race at the Hungaroring, teams’ pitstop procedures must have an inbuilt tolerance allowing for human reaction times in signalling. The figures are 0.15 seconds from wheelnuts being observed to be tight to the jack man being told to drop the car, and 0.2s from the jacks going down to the driver receiving the signal to go.
Teams have been given three races to prepare for the new requirements because they may need to change their procedures, and it could cause trouble to force them to do so without enough time for preparation.
Red Bull has routinely been the quickest squad in the pits this season, and it’s no surprise that team principal Christian Horner was against the move, calling it “disappointing” and questioning whether it would actually improve safety.
“I think that to have to hold the car for two tenths of a second, you could almost argue it’s dangerous because you’re judging your gaps,” said Horner. “The guy that’s releasing the car is having to make that judgement, and I think that it’s not been well thought through. F1 is about innovation and competition. Seeing pitstops sub-two seconds is a remarkable feat and we should be encouraging it, not trying to control it. Where does it stop? We’re going to be told which way to walk into the garage, where we should sit on the pitwall, and which buttons we should press I guess.”
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff denied suggestions that his squad was behind the push to slow down pitstops, saying the team “enquired with the
FIA on a safety mechanism” to see if it could optimise its own processes. “So did that trigger anything else?” said Wolff. “Maybe. I don’t know. But this is the question we’ve asked.”
Mclaren team principal Andreas Seidl said that the changes to the pitstops would not force his squad to do anything different, and he welcomed the FIA’S move.
“Safety for our pitcrew is one of the most important things for us as a team,” he said ahead of the Styrian GP. “It’s important to anticipate problems or safety issues, and not always wait until they happen and then react. Therefore we’re very happy with that.”