One stop or two? Every circuit on the calendar, timed

The question

"Is it a one-stop or a two-stop?" is a question with a number in it, and the number is how much faster. If the two-stop wins by thirty seconds, the one-stop is a mistake. If it wins by two, a safety car on lap 12 decides it and the strategist who committed early was guessing. The gap is the whole answer, and it is different at every circuit.

So: for each of the 24 circuits, what is the fastest legal plan, and by how much?

How this was measured

The engine behind the strategy simulator, run for every circuit with the same mid-grid driver of average tyre management. For each pairing of soft, medium and hard — two compounds for a one-stop, three for a two-stop, the two-compound rule applied — it tries every possible stop lap and keeps the quickest. Lap times come from the race model's own terms: compound pace, fuel burning off, tyre wear rising with every lap, the cliff when a set is finished, and the pit-lane loss for each stop. No traffic and no safety car in the first pass; both are added afterwards, because they change the answer.

Eighteen two-stops, four one-stops, two decided by traffic

In clean air, twenty of the twenty-four circuits are quicker on two stops. The margin is what separates them. At the top, Interlagos, the Hungaroring and Barcelona give the two-stop more than thirty seconds: the medium tyre lasts 23 or 24 laps of a 66- to 71-lap race and the one-stop needs a hard tyre that is slower every lap than the second stop costs. Lusail, the Red Bull Ring, Zandvoort and Bahrain are in the same family at 22 to 27 seconds. Nobody at those circuits is debating anything.

At the bottom, the four circuits that are one-stop on any maths are the ones where the tyre barely works: Las Vegas, Monza, Jeddah and Baku. Long straights, low lateral load, a medium that lasts 31 to 34 laps. The second stop buys a fresh tyre nobody needed and costs 18 to 21 seconds for it.

Between them is the interesting band, and it is narrower than the broadcast makes it sound. Only five circuits sit inside ten seconds either way: Melbourne (+1.8), Monaco (+2.3), Spa (+3.8), Yas Marina (+7.4) and Mexico City (+9.2). Those are the ones where the question is real and a safety car settles it.

Then you add traffic, and two of them flip

Clean-air time is what the pit wall computes; track position is what it loses sleep over. A second stop means a second rejoin, and rejoining behind a slower car at a circuit where you cannot pass costs real time the arithmetic does not see. The simulator charges for that with a per-stop penalty scaled to how hard the circuit is to overtake at — about eight seconds at Monaco, one at Monza — and once it does, Melbourne and Monaco flip to one-stops. A 2.3-second two-stop advantage at Monaco is not worth one rejoin into a train.

That gives the final count: eighteen two-stop races, six one-stops. Four of the six are one-stops because the tyre does not wear; two are one-stops because the circuit does not let you use the pace you would gain.

What sets the number

• How long a medium lasts. The single best predictor. 21 laps at Bahrain and Lusail, 37 at Monaco. Divide the race distance by it and you have the number of stints the tyre wants, before anyone has thought about pace.
• What a stop costs. 17.5 seconds at Montreal, 22.5 at Shanghai and Bahrain. Five seconds on the price of every stop is the difference between a two-stop that wins by a distance and one that wins by a coin toss.
• Whether you can overtake. Not a tyre question at all, and it decides two of the 24. Pace you cannot deploy is worth nothing.

The undercut, measured

The last column of the table is the undercut window: how many laps a car on a fresh medium needs to gain back a whole pit stop against a car that stayed out on a set near the cliff. It runs from seven laps at Bahrain, Suzuka, Silverstone, Austin, Spa and Lusail — where the old tyre is bleeding time — to eleven at Monaco, where the old tyre is barely slower than the new one and the fresh rubber never quite pays for the stop before the race is over. Short means the undercut is a weapon; long means the overcut, or simply staying out, is.

And a safety car re-prices all of it

A stop under the safety car costs about 55% of a normal one, because the field is crawling while you are in the pit lane. Half a pit stop for free is 9 to 11 seconds, which is more than the whole one-stop advantage at Baku, Jeddah or Monza. Drop a safety car on lap 20 into any of the four pure one-stop circuits on the simulator and watch the two-stop move to the top of the list. The reverse is also true: a two-stop that was thirty seconds clear does not care when the safety car comes, and a strategist at Interlagos can afford to ignore it.

Run your own

Every number here comes from the F1 pit strategy simulator: pick a circuit and a driver, drop a safety car in, and watch the order change. The lap time simulator shows the same tyre and fuel terms one lap at a time, and if you want to know why Monaco punishes the second rejoin so hard, we measured that separately.

Questions

Which F1 circuits are two-stop races?

In this model, eighteen of the 24 in 2026. The clearest are Interlagos, the Hungaroring and Barcelona, where two stops are more than thirty seconds quicker than one, followed by Lusail, the Red Bull Ring, Zandvoort and Bahrain at 22 to 27 seconds.

Which F1 circuits are one-stop races?

Las Vegas, Monza, Jeddah and Baku on any maths, because the tyres barely wear; plus Melbourne and Monaco, where a second stop is fractionally quicker in clean air but loses the race in traffic.

Why is a two-stop faster at some circuits and not others?

Tyre wear. Where a medium lasts 21 laps, a one-stop has to run a hard tyre far past the point where it is slower every lap than a stop costs. Where a medium lasts 34 laps, a second stop buys a tyre nobody needed. The pit-lane loss — 17.5 to 22.5 seconds depending on the circuit — sets the price of each extra stop.

How does a safety car change pit strategy?

A stop under the safety car costs roughly 55% of a normal one. That free half-stop is worth more than the entire one-stop advantage at the low-wear circuits, so a safety car in the middle of the race usually turns a one-stop into a two-stop.

Is this how real teams decide strategy?

The structure is the same — a tyre model, a pit-loss figure, every plan timed, then a judgement about track position — but real teams use live tyre data and a far richer model. The ratings and wear rates here are our own, tuned so the circuits that are two-stop in real life come out two-stop here.

More on this site

• F1 Career Simulator — one driver, karting to Formula 1.
• F1 Simulator Game — a single Grand Prix, lap by lap.
• F1 Championship Simulator — a full 24-round season, or run a team.
• How the simulation works — the model, in detail.