F1MATHS: McLaren fracitonally beats Ferrari for fastest pit stop in Mexico

McLaren's Lando Norris showed a dominant display at last Sunday's Mexico City Grand Prix to take his sixth victory this season, the first since Hungary and his first in Mexico. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo explains how teams performed in the pit lane.

Norris' team-mate Oscar Piastri faced a herculean task at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. The then championship leader started from seventh on the grid, but lost two places at the start.

For most of the Mexican Grand Prix, he was stuck up the exhaust pipe of a Mercedes – up the back of George Russell initially, followed then by Kimi Antonelli. Piastri piled on the pressure relentlessly on the two Mercedes drivers but was unable to overtake them.

The Melbourne-bor driver had originally planned a one-stop strategy, but many of the front-runners switched to a two-stop approach with the expection of the three podium finishers - Norris, Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

Piastri's first stop was not a successful one as McLaren took 3.59 seconds to change the softs to mediums. However, the second tyre service was a more successful display. The Australian elected to pit for the second time on Lap 47 when Piastri was instructed to pit and switch from Medium to Soft tires.

This second tyre change went without a hitch. His crew turned him around and sent him back on his way in just 2.10 seconds. Thanks to the Fastest Pit Stop of the race, Piastri was able to overtake Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli whose stop lasted 4.6 seconds.

Now on fresh soft tires, Piastri began to hunt down the second Mercedes driver. His time came on lap 60 as he closed in on Russell on the start-finish straight and overtook him in Turn 1, using DRS. Unfortunately, P5 was not enough for him to keep his lead in the world championship.

“That was a difficult race, said Piastri. It felt like we had very good pace; it was just incredibly difficult to use it with the DRS train and getting stuck in dirty air, which was a shame.” Nevertheless, he still saw some things that were positive in Mexico: “We did make some progress, and I learned a lot as well. We’ll take those positives into Brazil.”

Ferrari's Charles Leclerc finished the 71-lap encounter in second place, so did the Scuderia in terms of pit stop performance. The Monegasque's sole tyre change took 2.27 seconds, followed by Haas which excelled not only on track, but in the pit lane as well.

Sauber also had a successful time at the Autodromo Hermanos Rorriguez, recording the fourth-quickest tyre service. While it was a horrendous Sunday for Williams, the Grove-based outfit delivered two very quick tyre services for Alexander Albon and Carlos Sainz.