diff --git a/src/cluster.c b/src/cluster.c
index 7424f2d9..68628f06 100644
--- a/src/cluster.c
+++ b/src/cluster.c
@@ -1565,10 +1565,16 @@ void clusterCron(void) {
     }
 
     /* If we are a slave and our master is down, but is serving slots,
-     * call the function that handles the failover. */
+     * call the function that handles the failover.
+     * This function is called with a small delay in order to let the
+     * FAIL message to propagate after failure detection, this is not
+     * strictly required but makes 99.99% of failovers mechanically
+     * simpler. */
     if (server.cluster->myself->flags & REDIS_NODE_SLAVE &&
         server.cluster->myself->slaveof &&
         server.cluster->myself->slaveof->flags & REDIS_NODE_FAIL &&
+        (server.unixtime - server.cluster->myself->slaveof->fail_time) >
+         REDIS_CLUSTER_FAILOVER_DELAY &&
         server.cluster->myself->slaveof->numslots != 0)
     {
         clusterHandleSlaveFailover();
diff --git a/src/redis.h b/src/redis.h
index 2c662d6d..0eb74675 100644
--- a/src/redis.h
+++ b/src/redis.h
@@ -521,6 +521,7 @@ typedef struct redisOpArray {
 #define REDIS_CLUSTER_FAIL 1        /* The cluster can't work */
 #define REDIS_CLUSTER_NAMELEN 40    /* sha1 hex length */
 #define REDIS_CLUSTER_PORT_INCR 10000 /* Cluster port = baseport + PORT_INCR */
+#define REDIS_CLUSTER_FAILOVER_DELAY 5 /* Seconds */
 
 struct clusterNode;