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We measured the Qatar lap. Its slowest corner is taken at 99 km/h, the highest minimum speed of any circuit we have measured, and it is why Lusail eats tyres.
Qatar is the only race on the Formula 1 calendar where the governing body has told teams how long they are allowed to run a set of tyres.
It has happened twice. In 2023 the limit was 18 laps per set, which turned a 57 lap race into a forced three-stop. In 2025 it was 25 laps, forcing a minimum of two. No other circuit has ever needed it.
The reason is measurable, and it is not the heat.
| 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fastest qualifying lap | 1:19.387, Piastri | 1:20.520, Verstappen | 1:23.778, Verstappen |
| Lap distance recorded | 5.355 km | 5.375 km | 5.372 km |
| Average lap speed | 242.8 km/h | 240.3 km/h | 230.8 km/h |
| Highest speed on the lap | 327 km/h | 324 km/h | 322 km/h |
| Full throttle | 74.1% | 76.4% | 67.5% |
| Braking events | 7 | 7 | 8 |
| Slowest point | 99 km/h | 99 km/h | 93 km/h |
| Track temperature | 25.5C | 21.7C | 34.4C |
One number on that table explains the whole circuit.
The slowest point of a flying lap at Lusail is 99 km/h. Not the slowest corner on average, the slowest single moment anywhere on the lap.
Set that against every other circuit we have measured:
Every other circuit in Formula 1 has somewhere the driver has to genuinely slow down. Lusail does not. It is a sequence of medium and high speed corners strung together with only seven braking events across 5.4 km, and the car is loaded up in a corner for almost the entire lap.
That is what destroys the tyres. Not temperature, and not the abrasive surface people usually blame. Lateral energy, applied continuously, with no slow corner anywhere to unload the tyre and let it recover.
In October 2023, after analysing tyres used in first practice, Pirelli found separation in the sidewall between the topping compound and the carcass cords on a large number of sets. The cause was identified as high-frequency interference between the sidewall and the 50 mm pyramid kerbs used around the circuit, made worse by how heavily drivers were riding them.
The FIA and Pirelli imposed a maximum of 18 laps of total tyre life per set, on safety grounds. On a 57 lap race that is a mandatory three-stop.
In 2025 it happened again in a different form. After analysis of the 2024 event showed several tyres, particularly the left front, reaching maximum wear, a limit of 25 laps per set was set, counted cumulatively across the weekend and including safety car laps. That forces a minimum of two stops.
Here is the measurement that makes the case.
| Year | Laps | Mean stops per driver | Most common | Safety cars | Mandated tyre limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 57 | 2.20 | 2 | 1 | 25 laps per set |
| 2024 | 57 | 3.05 | 3 | 4 | none |
| 2023 | 57 | 2.89 | 3 | 1 | 18 laps per set |
2024 had no mandated limit at all, and produced more pit stops than the year the FIA forced a three-stop. A mean of 3.05 stops per driver, against 2.89 in the regulated 2023 race.
That matters, because the usual reading of the Qatar tyre rules is that officials are making teams do something artificial. The data says the opposite. Left alone, teams stopped three times anyway. The circuit was already a three-stop; the regulation only removed the option of gambling on fewer.
For context, the mean across the 2026 season is 2.05 stops per driver. Qatar in 2024 ran a full stop above that, and it is the highest figure of any circuit in this series. Interlagos, the next most demanding, sits at 1.90 to 2.00. Our season-wide numbers are in how many pit stops in an F1 race.
2024 also produced four safety car deployments plus a virtual safety car, comfortably the most of any race we have measured.
More of the archive is at the 2026 team radio index.
The tyre story tends to bury this, but Lusail is quick.
At 242.8 km/h in 2025 it is faster than every circuit in our measured series except the very fastest few, and quicker than Las Vegas at 239.4 despite Las Vegas having a 1,800 metre straight and Lusail having nothing longer than 1,197 metres.
That is the same point from the other direction. Lusail does not need a long straight to be fast, because it never slows down. Las Vegas gets its average from one enormous flat-out run and gives some of it back in the middle sector. Lusail carries speed everywhere. The full ranking is in the fastest F1 circuits.
The 2023 figure of 230.8 km/h is the odd one out, and there is a reason for it that is not the car. That weekend ran with the 18-lap tyre limit and a track temperature of 34.4C, nine degrees hotter than 2025, and full throttle was down at 67.5% against 74.1%. Drivers were managing, not attacking.
The current cars carry roughly 30% less downforce than the generation that set the laps above, which we measured in are F1 cars getting faster.
Lusail is close to the worst possible circuit at which to lose downforce. A lap made almost entirely of sustained high-speed cornering is exactly where downforce earns its lap time, so the corner speeds should fall further here than at a stop-start circuit.
Whether that helps the tyres is genuinely unclear, and worth watching rather than predicting. Less downforce means less load through the tyre, which points to less wear. But it also means lower corner speeds, longer lap times and more laps spent sliding, which points the other way. Qatar in 2026 is the first real test of which effect wins.
One structural change is already known: the 2026 Qatar Grand Prix is a conventional weekend, not the sprint format used in 2023 and 2024. That removes a race distance worth of tyre wear from the weekend before the Grand Prix even starts.
The Qatar Grand Prix is round 22 of the 2026 season, on 29 November.
The Formula Dream app runs a live Dashboard through every session: every car on the circuit map, and a timing tower with lap times, gaps and intervals, tyre compound and age, plus flag and safety car alerts as race control calls them. Qatar is the one weekend where tyre age is not a detail but the whole race, because a mandated stint limit turns every strategy into arithmetic you can follow live. You also get live driver radio as it is broadcast, and every FIA document of the weekend as it is published, which at the circuit where the FIA has twice changed the rules mid-weekend is where you find out first.
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Because of sidewall damage. In 2023 Pirelli found separation between the sidewall topping compound and the carcass cords, caused by high-frequency interference with the circuit's 50 mm pyramid kerbs, and the FIA imposed a maximum of 18 laps per set on safety grounds. In 2025 a 25-lap limit was set after 2024 tyres, particularly the left front, reached maximum wear.
Three is the usual answer. The mean was 3.05 stops per driver in 2024 with no limit in force, 2.89 in the regulated 2023 race, and 2.20 in 2025 under a 25-lap limit. The 2026 season average across all circuits is 2.05.
Because nothing on the lap is slow. We measured the slowest point of a flying lap at 99 km/h, the highest minimum speed of any circuit we have measured, with only seven braking events. The tyre is loaded laterally almost continuously and never gets a slow corner in which to recover.
The fastest 2025 qualifying lap averaged 242.8 km/h with a peak of 327 km/h, measured from car telemetry. That is quicker than Las Vegas at 239.4 km/h, despite Lusail's longest flat-out run being 1,197 metres against Las Vegas's 1,800.
Our telemetry recorded 5.355 km on the racing line for the 2025 pole lap, and the Qatar Grand Prix is 57 laps.
No. Round 22 of the 2026 season is a conventional weekend, unlike 2023 and 2024, which both ran the sprint format.
Losing DRS was supposed to kill overtaking. Across nine dry circuits raced in both seasons, on-track position changes fell by 3.9%. That is all.
