While Formula 1 is enjoying a fiercely contested title race in 2025, the on-track action has left fans underwhelmed. Despite Oscar Piastri impressive win in Saudi Arabia—becoming the first non-pole sitter to triumph this season—many fear the racing has become too predictable.
That win came thanks to a bold move into Turn 1 and a post-race penalty for Max Verstappen, but otherwise, the trend has leaned toward static races, with overtaking at a premium and tyre strategies largely uniform. This has sparked early-season concerns that F1 is turning into a “qualifying championship” where Saturday’s results all but determine Sunday’s outcomes.
At the heart of the issue is a combination of factors: turbulent dirty air, a tightly packed field with minimal performance gaps, and limited tyre strategy options. With technical regulations unlikely to change mid-season, the spotlight has turned to Pirelli, F1’s exclusive tyre supplier, for potential solutions.
In response, Pirelli has adopted more aggressive tyre compound selections—opting for softer options in a bid to increase degradation and force teams into multiple pit stops. The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix featured softer compounds than in 2024, and the upcoming races in Miami and Imola will follow suit, with Imola marking the debut of the new C6 supersoft compound.
However, the evidence so far suggests this strategy may not be enough. As Pirelli Motorsport Director Mario Isola explained, teams are becoming increasingly proficient at tyre management. “We want to push teams toward a two-stop strategy,” he said. “But they’re getting better and better at managing tyres, which makes it difficult to enforce.”
To address this, Pirelli is considering a new approach: widening the performance gap between available compounds. Instead of choosing three consecutive tyres (like C3, C4, and C5), the company could skip a step—for example, bringing C2, C4, and C5. This would make the hardest available tyre less competitive, discouraging one-stop strategies and encouraging more aggressive approaches.
Yet the most intriguing idea under discussion doesn’t involve tyres at all—it involves the pit lane.
Currently, the pit lane speed limit is set at 80 km/h across all races, a rule established in 1994 for safety reasons. However, modern pit lanes are significantly safer today, with fewer personnel and better overall protocols. That has led to a growing belief that a small increase in the speed limit—perhaps to 100 km/h—could meaningfully reduce the time loss associated with pit stops.
As Isola points out, three factors define race strategy: tyre degradation, overtaking difficulty, and pit stop time loss. If the first two can’t be immediately resolved, adjusting the third could make a real difference.
Importantly, no one is proposing a return to the dangerous days of the early ’90s, when unrestricted pit lane speeds led to chaotic scenes—like Ayrton Senna setting the fastest lap of the 1993 European Grand Prix by flying through the pits. Instead, a moderate speed increase could be enough to alter strategic thinking without compromising safety.
Preliminary analysis shows that even a modest bump to 100 km/h could cut several seconds off pit stop times—potentially enough to make two-stop strategies more viable across various circuits.
With the sport actively seeking ways to boost excitement and unpredictability, it seems the key to solving its one-stop problem might just lie in the most overlooked part of the race track: the pit lane.
