Ferrari completed the quickest tyre change in Montreal while Mercedes revealed upgraded hardware for their pit stops

Having left last weekend's Montreal round without any championship points, the sole trophy Ferrari brought home from the Canadian Grand Prix was the DHL Fastest Pit Stop.

Ferrari had endured a horrible weekend last time out in Canada. The Scuderia looked competitive on Friday, showing an impressive performance during their long run simulations. However, their speed faded for Saturday with both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz having struggled for grip in the medium-speed corners.

The lack of speed saw the Spaniard and the Monégasque fail to make the cut into Q3, which meant that they lined up in P11 and P12 on the grid. The race then brought a host of further difficulties for the two Ferrari men.

Leclerc had a great launch off the line, and gained two spots, but he suffered a power unit issue early on which meant that he missed around 80 horsepower which saw him lose around half a second per lap. The Monegasque carried out a hard reset with the help of the team, restarted the car and all the systems, which actually seemed to have got rid of his power unit problem.

However, he had lost a huge amount of time and was trailing in last place. Ultimately, Ferrari decided to retire Leclerc's car to save mileage on the key components.

Carlos Sainz had a tough start to his race, having lost several places at the start. The Spaniard was unable to improve his position in the opening stages of the race as he looked uncomfortable in the slippery conditions.

The Madrid-born driver then looked stronger on the drying track, but he lost control of his car over a wet kerb and spun around. The out-of-control Ferrari collected the Williams of Alexander Albon and sent him into the barriers. Sainz was also forced to retire with damage to the rear wing and the floor of his car.

Despite the disappointing race, Ferrari displayed a strong performance in the pit lane.

When Leclerc came in to fit new intermediates during the first safety car deployment on lap 25, the service time was really fast at 2.29 seconds.

Six laps later, Ferrari changed the tyres on Leclerc's again which took only 2.1 seconds. This excellent work was enough to secure the team the DHL Fastest Pit Stop.

Mercedes performed the second-quickest tyres change (2.24s). The Brackley-based outfit had difficulties with their pit stop in the past season as they were significantly slower than what Ferrari and Red Bull managed to achieve. After the first rounds of the 2024 F1 season, it is clear to see that the Anglo-German outfit has improved their tyre changes.

Speaking of the improvement Mercedes have made recently, technical director James Allison said: "Well, it's a pretty full spectrum effort, that is. If we had run last year's equipment into this year, it would have been impossible, no matter how much the guys had trained, to get the sort of pit stop times we're doing now. We know that we weren't competitive with our stops last year.

"And so we invested a good chunk of effort into the fine detail of the corners of the car, such that the wheel nuts and the wheels can come on and off more quickly, and with a wider range of sorts of application error by the gunmen.

"So big effort from all the people in mechanical design to focus on those tiny details, then make all the bits, then test all the bits in T&D. And then  once we've made the sort of leap forward with the hardware, then it's over to the pit crews, who,  in addition to building the car before the race weekend, in the tiny slots in between they get, wheeling out the car and practising.

"And getting that amount of choreographed, coordinated  activity, which it looks beautiful when you see it on the telly, that doesn't happen without just an enormous amount of practice. And we're very pleased with the fact that it's moved forward a fair chunk. You always feel with pit stops, no matter how much training is done and how much   you invest into the hardware, there's always a sort of Damocles hanging over them.

"And this weekend, we had a really quite slow stop.  Happily, it was in a safety car period, and it cost us nothing. But the slowness of that stop hinged on the tiniest of things. And once the tiniest of   things just go a bit out of sequence, you have a sort of roll up of other things that then go out   of sequence.

"And what was a sort of amazing blink of an eye, two second pit stop, becomes a sort of shocking wait while the car is sitting there ready to go and the lights are red. But happily, we didn't pay a price for that this weekend. But it's a healthy reminder of the fact that, the moment's   in attention, we'll see it run away from you," concluded Allison.