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Marko assures disaster stop won't repeat itself: System has been improved

Marko assures disaster stop won't repeat itself: "System has been improved"

22-09-2021 14:29 Last update: 16:11
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GPblog.com

Red Bull Racing is known for their lightning-fast pit stops. The team starts almost every race with the award for the fastest pit stop, but at Monza, things went completely wrong. The rule change regarding the stops caused confusion, causing Max Verstappen to stop for over eleven seconds.

This caused the Dutchman to fall way back, and he ended up right next to Lewis Hamilton after he too made a poor stop - the rest is history. Helmut Marko explains what caused the confusion and that the team have taken measures to prevent a recurrence in the future.

Marko assures Red Bull problem is solved

"After the rule change, the mechanics have to wait 0.15 seconds until the car is released," the Austrian begins in conversation with RTL. This requires the mechanics to press a button to indicate that they are ready, followed by an automatic green light when all tyres are.

"That button was not pressed, and so the signal was not passed on to the lollipop man, even though the car had been ready for a long time," he continued his explanation. However, the scenario should not occur in the future. "We train continuously, otherwise we wouldn't be making the fastest pit stops overall. The system has been improved so this can't happen anymore," assures Marko.