diff --git a/internal/ingress/controller/nginx.go b/internal/ingress/controller/nginx.go
index 945d6047bf..07978cee59 100644
--- a/internal/ingress/controller/nginx.go
+++ b/internal/ingress/controller/nginx.go
@@ -417,12 +417,9 @@ func (n *NGINXController) stopWait() {
 
 		diff := st.Requests - lastRequests
 		// We assume that there were no client requests to nginx, if and only if
-		// there were 0 to 2 increase in handled requests from the last scrape.
-		// 1 is to account for our own stub_status request from this method,
-		// and the other 1 is to account for the readinessProbe.
-		// Note that readinessProbe DO happen even when the pod is terminating.
-		// See: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/122824#issuecomment-1899224434
-		noChange := 0 <= diff && diff <= 2
+		// there were 0 to 1 increase in handled requests from the last scrape -
+		// 1 is to account for our own stub_status request from this method.
+		noChange := 0 <= diff && diff <= 1
 		if noChange {
 			noChangeTimes++
 			if noChangeTimes >= waitUntilNoConnectionsFor {
diff --git a/test/e2e/gracefulshutdown/k8s_async_shutdown.go b/test/e2e/gracefulshutdown/k8s_async_shutdown.go
index 9a4bc368d7..c627de2d3f 100644
--- a/test/e2e/gracefulshutdown/k8s_async_shutdown.go
+++ b/test/e2e/gracefulshutdown/k8s_async_shutdown.go
@@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ var _ = framework.IngressNginxDescribe("[Shutdown] Asynchronous shutdown", func(
 		// therefore we are still receiving traffic while shutting down
 		go func() {
 			defer ginkgo.GinkgoRecover()
-			for i := 0; i < 120; i++ {
+			for i := 0; i < 30; i++ {
 				f.HTTPDumbTestClient().
 					GET("/").
 					WithURL(fmt.Sprintf("http://%s/", ip)).
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ var _ = framework.IngressNginxDescribe("[Shutdown] Asynchronous shutdown", func(
 					Expect().
 					Status(http.StatusOK)
 
-				framework.Sleep(250 * time.Millisecond)
+				framework.Sleep(time.Second)
 			}
 		}()