What’s the most important pit stop in McLaren history? There are several contenders, but it’s hard to look past Lando’s flawless stop on Lap 26 in last year’s season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.  

Carlos Sainz had pitted the lap before, attempting to undercut Lando, and putting pressure on our team to get his stop right. If we got it right, Lando would retain the lead of the race and give us a very good chance of winning the Constructors’ Championship. Had we got it wrong, Lando would have come out in P2, leaving us short of the points required to win the Constructors’ Championship. 

Under the most extreme pressure, our crew got it right. And not just right, very right: 2.08 seconds – the fastest stop of the race. The path to executing a pit stop well on the final day of the season is a task at least a year in the making. Maybe longer… 

Competition for places

A pit crew isn’t a team of specialists. It’s drawn from the people working in the garage, who don’t have an active role when the cars are on track: mechanics and garage technicians are in the mix, engineers and systems technicians are not.

There is competition for places, with the team carefully assembled in the off-season. It’s less a case of having the fastest individual in any given position and more about having the right mix of people: there are positions that require strength, others in need of dexterity. Some tasks need a right-hand/left-hand combination, and you certainly don’t want a crew where one side of the car is quicker than the other, as that tends to rock the car around a bit too much. Equally, character is important: you want gunners that are calm and analytical – but a front jack operator with the fast-twitch muscles of a jackrabbit.

There’s a lot of work done over the winter to make sure the right people are in the right roles, with targets and training plans having been set towards the end of the previous season. The configuration is then nailed down as the new season approaches.

“The team will have regular training sessions and pit stop practice over pre-season, starting in January, and building up the squad to enable us to put the strongest team out at each event,” says Car Operations & Engineering Director Charlie Hooper. “We are continually evolving how we approach the winter break to see how it best suits both how pit stop regulations have changed and how the racing calendar looks.” 

Charlie’s use of the word ‘squad’ is noteworthy. The pit crew used to be a fixed team, with only injury or emergency seeing it changed – but that doesn’t work for modern F1: with a 24-race calendar and a number of triple-headers, rotation in the garage crew has become part of the game – and if the garage crew is rotating, so too must the people doing the pit stops.

In much the same way that the bench-strength of a Champions’ League football team is seen as a plus-point, increasing pit crew rotation is viewed as an opportunity to maintain a higher level of pit-stop performance across the season: negating fatigue and keeping the crew fresh. And rather than the traditional system of having direct replacements for each role, cross-training has become the norm.

“We have a much larger squad of pit crew members than we did two to three years ago to enable us to rotate team members in and out of races to ensure the season is sustainable,” explains Charlie. “The majority of the crew are trained up in multiple positions so, while they may have a primary role, they can also jump into a different position and perform at a high level.”

Practice makes perfect  

People are often surprised to see that pit-stop practice sessions are so short in F1. The team might go out into the pit lane to do five or six standard stops and then a couple of wildcards for variety – a nosebox change, steering wheel swap etc. – and that’s considered sufficient. Too much is as damaging as too little, with endless repetition likely to dull the edge.

There’s also a question of fatigue: it’s not unknown for practice to be shortened or cancelled if the crew have worked a long shift and been at track late into the evening – or even if conditions are severe. It’s notable that the World Record 1.8s stop in Lusail was delivered after the crew had opted against practising on Sunday, deciding that it would have done more harm than good. The afternoon heat in Qatar would have had the crew running through 20 minutes of heavy physical work, out on the 60°C apron.  

“We have a standard layout of pit-stop practice throughout a race weekend, which is a mix of out-of-session work with the car pushed into the box, and also live stops through the three practice sessions,” says Charlie. “However, this plan is reviewed at each event depending on various factors: we will look to see if we need to increase stop numbers if we have new crew members that weekend – or reduce them to prevent crew fatigue. At events like Singapore with high temperature and humidity, we will likely reduce stop numbers over the weekend.” 

You're watching a 2.1-second pit stop ▶️⚡️#McLaren #F1 pic.twitter.com/Kpu3SY6Pyl

— McLaren (@McLarenF1) June 17, 2025

It's important to note the purpose of this practice isn’t to make pit stops faster, but rather to make them better. Speed is not the goal. It is, of course, a happy day when a record is broken, but it happens when it happens: the message constantly reinforced to the crew is that they shouldn’t be chasing ‘worldies’.

“It’s no good breaking a world record if the next pit stop is five seconds,” explains Charlie. “We make it clear to the crew that meeting our consistency targets set out at the start of the year will ultimately lead to the best on-track performance for the team.

“Reviewing and eliminating the errors seen during practice stops means the crew go into the race in a strong position and are not chasing the records. If the crew trusts in their performance and follows the processes laid out, the fast and consistent stops will come.” 

A different kind of development race 

It doesn’t map across entirely, but pit-stop prowess tends to be closely linked with aspirations in the Constructors’ Championship. This isn’t a question of talent, motivation or effort, but one of where to spend your resources. The Championship-chasing teams will typically invest in improving their pit stops, which could shave a crucial couple of tenths off an average stop, or reduce the incidence of a poor stop with a broken jack or stuck nut.

Whereas, the teams towards the back of the grid might prefer to sink that money into lap-time, on the basis good or bad stops aren’t likely to influence their points haul significantly, but allocating more of their resources to aerodynamic or mechanical development might.

And the pit crew themselves will be at the heart of this development push. As well as reviewing pit stop footage to perfect their work, they will feed back on what they need to be better and on how the equipment can be improved.

“There is a constant feedback loop with the pit-crew to ensure the kit works best for them and is easily usable,” Charlie says. “This feedback is given all the way through the season after each event to ensure no development path is missed.” 

The human element  

This is not a question of technology alone. F1 is a team sport and nowhere is that more apparent than during a pit stop. Pit stops are an athletic activity, and the crew will go through a series of stretching and coordination exercises before a session, but in a more holistic sense, the amount of attention paid to the crew, in terms of fitness, diet, and general wellbeing is now at a level that would appear alien to a crew from a generation back.  

Pit stops, quite simply, are treated like any other facet of the racing operation, and subjected to the same level of rigorous analysis and development.  

“Human performance is becoming ever more important to the team to ensure that fatigue is minimised and performance is met when it matters. 

“Through the off-season, we will practise pit stops, but we’ll also spend a lot of time in the Optimum Nutrition McLaren Performance Hub with our Strength & Conditioning team, utilising focused training sessions to build up not just strength but resilience for what is a long season, preparing for the physical impact pit stops put on the body.” 

Execution 

What all of this means is that when the call is made from the pit wall to bring Lando or Oscar in for a change, they can do so safe in the knowledge that the stop will be a good one.

There isn’t a magic formula for doing a consistently good pit stop, and the nature of the activity ensures there is always potential for chaos – but the work that goes on behind the scenes is there to ensure the pit crew is in the best possible position to deliver when the pressure is on.