Sports director Ferrari: "That won't be any different this season"

If it is up to sporting director of Ferrari Laurent Mekies we will see little difference with pit stops compared to last year. Despite the staff restrictions imposed by Formula 1 on the teams for next season.

Social bubbles

Formula 1 is doing its utmost to combat the spread of the coronavirus and has therefore designated a maximum number of staff per team. Each team may bring a maximum of 80 people to the track. Teams such as Ferrari have also set up their own social bubbles within the teams. This keeps the crews of both cars separated from each other as much as possible.

The complications will make it more difficult for team members to work closely together. It is therefore expected that operations in the garage will take longer than normal. According to Mekies, however, this will have no effect on the pit stops themselves.

No difference at the pit stops

"We now have an overall [personnel] limit which was not there before, of 80 people in total. So we had to cut mainly non technical people. As a result, the pitstop operations and engineering operations are not so much affected", says Mekies quoted by Motorsport.com.

"They are a little bit affected because through global responsibility we have tried to take as few people as possible to the racetrack regardless of the limit. But overall, you will not see a big change in the number of people involved in pit stop or in operations", continued Mekies.

"We have reduced the numbers to do as many things as we could remotely. As you know, we have what we call the ‘parallel box’ here [at Ferrari], the remote garage, that supports our operations. So everything we can do, we are doing remotely. As I'm sure the other teams are doing, as are the FIA. But as far as the pitstops are concerned, you will see the same operation there", ends Mekies.