F1 News
McLaren performs the impossible and beats Red Bull's pit stop record
- GPblog.com
McLaren performed the impossible at the Mexican Grand Prix. Indeed, for the first time since the new regulations, it recorded a pit stop time of under two seconds.
Red Bull Racing and McLaren are the teams to beat in the pit lane this F1 season. Red Bull has made this a speciality for years, but McLaren is a formidable competitor this season for the DHL Fastest Pit Stop Award. Before the Mexican Grand Prix, Red Bull still dominated the list of fastest times, but that is no longer the case.
Unique for McLaren
The fastest pit stop to date was that of Sergio Perez at the Dutch Grand Prix. The Austrian racing team took 2.09 seconds to make that pit stop. That record is now gone, as Daniel Ricciardo's pit stop in Mexico took just 1.98 seconds. That is the first pit stop since the new regulations of less than two seconds.
McLaren picks up right in the standings, as the second time of the weekend (2.29s) is also in the name of the Woking-based team. Red Bull lags this weekend, finishing in sixth place with Max Verstappen's pit stop (2.58s). In the standings, Red Bull still remains in the lead with 501 points and still has a wide margin over McLaren's 384 points. That the British team now has the fastest time of the season, however, Red Bull will be keen to change that in the final two races.