MOTORSPORT: Webber world champion – for a pitstop
Breaking the two-second barrier for his pitstop in the US GP gives the Aussie retiring from F1 a place in the history booksJust when we thought he was bowing out of Formula One without a world championship Mark Webber has won one – with a record short pitstop.
Red Bull Racing says Webber’s sole stop in the 2013 United States Grand Prix took less than two seconds – the fastest recorded.
“The team’s car data recorded Mark as being stationary for just 1.923 seconds,” RBR has said.
F1 pitstops have become progressively faster since refueling was abolished in 2010 and crews now usually only change a car’s four tyres.
The previous fastest stop was Webber’s second at this year’s Malaysian GP – at 2.05 seconds – before the controversial pass by his teammate Sebastian Vettel that day that denied the Aussie what would have been a victory in his final F1 season.
That stop beat the 2.31 seconds the McLaren team had recorded for a Jenson Button pitstop during the 2012 German GP.
RBR team principal Christian Horner has called the sub-two-second stop for Webber’s car at the Circuit of the Americas “an incredible feat … an incredible team performance”.
Webber will retire from F1 after the Brazilian GP next Monday morning, Australian time, which he is hoping will produce the 10th win of his 12-year career in the world’s major motor racing series before he switches to sports car racing next year with Porsche.
Vettel will be going for a 13th win of the year at the Interlagos circuit in Sao Paulo – a feat that would equal his German countryman Michael Schumacher’s 2004 record.
It also would be 26-year-old four-time world champion Vettel’s ninth straight victory – something only achieved in GPs by Italian Alberto Ascari across the 1951-52 seasons.
Watch a gif of the record breaking pit stop here
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