2.35 seconds – no more than a brief moment in time. That’s all the Williams crew needed to turn around the FW38 of Valtteri Bottas, making the British team a split second faster than their Mercedes colleagues, who sent race winner Nico Rosberg on his way in 2.65 seconds after his fastest race stop. Williams also achieved the third-fastest stop of the race with a time of 2.72 seconds for Brazilian driver Felipe Massa, proving the Williams crew’s consistency.
There were a total of 26 pit stops during the 58 laps of the 2016 Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix. Pit crews beat the three-second benchmark in eleven of them. A speed limit of 60 km/h applies to 289 meters of the pit lane at the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit, and a driver needs 20.5 seconds on average to cover this distance.
