Sauber beats Ferrari for fastest pit stop at Barcelona

Although Ferrari have dominated pit stops so far in 2025, Sauber managed to surpass the Italian outfit at last Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix with the quickest tyre service of the entire race.

Last weekend's Spanish Grand Prix presented the teams with strategic challenges. In the practice sessions, it became clear that the hard tires on the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya were not coming into the working window.

As a result, the drivers had to make do with softs and mediums and adopt two-stop or even three-stop strategies, which meant that the pit crews had to maintain maximum concentration throughout. On this occasion, it was the Sauber team who executed the fastest pit stop.

On lap 19, they swapped Gabriel Bortoleto’s worn soft tires for new mediums in 2.13 seconds. It was Sauber’s second DHL Fastest Pit Stop of the year which catapulted them from fifth to third in this particular competition, taking them above Red Bull and Mercedes.

Interestingly, Alpine completed the second-quickest tyre change (2.15s) while Ferrari was only a fraction behind (2.17s). It was a close competitive behind as McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull also performed tyre changes between the 2.20s and 2.30s range.

Despite his quickest pit stop, Bortoleto was unable to score points at Barcelona as he fell back to 12th after the safety car restart.

“First things first, congratulations to Nico and the team. This result is a testament of how well the upgrades have worked, and seeing the car's potential today has been truly inspiring – making me even more motivated to work towards my first points.

"From my side, I think it has been a solid race. We took everything we had in our hands and made the most of it. The team did a really good job with the strategy today. The Safety Car didn’t swing our way, but that’s part of racing. What really stands out is the pace we showed — it was strong, and the upgrades were a big step forward for both of us.

"It’s been a triple header full of learnings and positive momentum. We’re heading in the right direction, and now it’s straight back to work as we get ready to hit the ground running in Montreal in two weeks," the Brazilian added.