- A new kubelet metric `image_pull_duration_seconds` was added. The metric tracks the duration (in seconds) it takes for an image to be pulled, including the time spent in the waiting queue of image puller. The metric is broken down by bucketed image size. ([#121719](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121719), [@ruiwen-zhao](https://github.com/ruiwen-zhao))

- Added apiserver.latency.k8s.io/apf-queue-wait annotation to the audit log
  to record the time spent waiting in APF queue. ([#123919](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/123919), [@hakuna-matatah](https://github.com/hakuna-matatah))

  //
  // Pending: The pod has been accepted by the Kubernetes system, but one or more of the
  // container images has not been created. This includes time before being scheduled as
  // well as time spent downloading images over the network, which could take a while.
  // Running: The pod has been bound to a node, and all of the containers have been created.

- Faster mount detection for linux kernel 5.10+ using openat2 speeding up pod churn rates. On Kernel versions less 5.10, it will fallback to using the original way of detecting mount points i.e by parsing /proc/mounts. ([#109217](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/109217), [@manugupt1](https://gi...