In Formula 1, every millisecond counts.
And a place where teams can make up, or even lose, a few milliseconds is during the pit stop.
For those not familiar with motorsports, a pit stop is where a driver will head into a garage area during a race and can change their tyres, refuel their vehicle or even change body parts like the front and back wings.
In the fastest motorsport in the world, Formula 1 (F1), refuelling is a thing of the past, but teams are required to use two different types of tyres per race so pit stops are mandatory.
Teams employ mechanics who wait for the car in the pit lane and try to get the car back out on the track as fast as possible.
In the 1990s, pit stops would last roughly 10 seconds as cars got a fresh set of wheels in addition to being refueled.
But since Guinness World Records began monitoring the world's fastest Formula 1 pit stop in 2013, the record has only had 0.12 seconds knocked off in 11 years.
Mark Webber's pit stop during the Malaysian Grand Prix in 2013 was measured at 1.92 seconds - that's the amount of time the car was stationary in the pit lane.
This record was matched by Felipe Massa's Williams car in 2016 at the Azerbaijan GP in Baku.
In 2019, Red Bull Racing reclaimed the title they once held by breaking the pit stop record three times in one season.
Pierre Gasly's 1.91-second stop at the British GP broke the record by just a hundredth of a second, before Max Verstappen's 1.88-second stop two weeks later once again set the record.
Then, during the penultimate race of the season, Verstappen was behind the wheel again as his team pulled off an incredible stop in 1.82 seconds.
But it was McLaren and the team behind Lando Norris' F1 car in 2023 that set the current record at a lightning fast speed of 1.80 seconds.
It was the 27th lap of the night-time Qatar GP and Norris had been slowly working his way through the field from his starting position of 10th up into 2nd.
He pulled over to the right-hand side of the pit lane and was stationary for just the 1.8 seconds needed for his mechanics to get an old set of medium compound tyres off and a fresh set of medium compound tyres on.
Upon exiting the pit lane, he had moved down to seventh but was able to recover and finish the race on the podium in third position.
During last weekend's 2024 season opener in Bahrain, the fastest pit stop was measured at 2.23 seconds. Will we see a faster one than McLaren's record this season?
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