Mercedes planning pit stop changes ‘to ramp' up its game

Toto Wolff revealed after last weekend’s US Grand Prix that Mercedes will undergo equipment and procedure changes to “ramp up” its pit stop game relative to its rivals.

Lewis Hamilton’s exclusion from the last Sunday’s race for an excessive wear of the floor plank on his W14 took nothing away from the fact that the Briton had delivered in Austin his strongest performance of 2023 by finishing second just 2.2s behind race winner Max Verstappen.

However, Hamilton noted that he could have perhaps challenged his Red Bull rival for an outright win had his Mercedes crews produced faster pit stops during the race.

“I think in one of the pit stops, I might have been a bit long, which then made it harder for the guys, and then the stop wasn’t that great overall,” the seven-time world champion admitted.

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All season long, Mercedes has typically performed at the low-end of the fastest pit stop rankings. At COTA, McLaren, which established a new historic record in Qatar a new record with an incredible 1.8s stop, was again the fastest team to service one of its drivers.

The Woking-based outfit’s execution clocked in at 2.07s while Mercedes’ best effort was timed at 2.58s. But Hamilton was immobile for 3.6s and 3.4s during his respective stops.

Wolff therefore agreed that it’s time for the Brackley squad to raise its pit stop game.

“Our mindset in the last 12 years, we don’t need to be World Champions in pitstops,” Wolff explained.

“We need to avoid very slow pitstops. And it’s coming to a situation now where we realise that it has got so competitive, and we just need to ramp up our game up there.

“That’s in terms of equipment and science around it, and the way we are set up, to avoid 3 or 3.5 seconds pitstops because all of that played a part.”

While he wasn’t rewarded for his efforts, Hamilton will have left Austin with a positive outlook on the future given his car’s level of performance at COTA.

“I feel positive as we’re moving forward, even if reflecting on it we could have possibly won today,” commented Hamilton who reduced his gap to Sergio Perez in the Drivers’ standings to 39 points.

“It is of course disappointing to be disqualified post-race but that doesn’t take away from the progress we’ve made this weekend.”

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