diff --git a/.github/workflows/molecule.yml b/.github/workflows/molecule.yml
index c21c6d87..71049694 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/molecule.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/molecule.yml
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ on:
         description: JSON array of Elastic major versions
       timeout:
         type: number
-        default: 45
+        default: 60
       max-parallel:
         type: number
         default: 10
diff --git a/molecule/shared/create.yml b/molecule/shared/create.yml
index 28b4900b..cf9fbc90 100644
--- a/molecule/shared/create.yml
+++ b/molecule/shared/create.yml
@@ -130,14 +130,16 @@
         REMOTE_SCRIPT
       changed_when: true
       register: _launch_result
-      # 30 retries × 30s = 15 min. Deliberately shorter than the workflow
-      # timeout (45 min for the standard molecule.yml call, 120 min for
+      # 90 retries × 30s = 45 min. Deliberately shorter than the workflow
+      # timeout (60 min for the standard molecule.yml call, 180 min for
       # full_stack) so the task fails loudly with the last "No capacity:
       # …" stdout instead of being silently cancelled by the workflow
       # timeout — that made the queue-starvation cases very hard to
       # diagnose (see PR investigating the elasticsearch_roles_calculation
-      # / elasticstack_default post-outage hangs).
-      retries: 30
+      # / elasticstack_default post-outage hangs). Bumped from 30 after a
+      # sustained multi-PR CI storm evicted every heavy scenario on the
+      # first attempt.
+      retries: 90
       delay: 30
       until: _launch_result.rc == 0