Dead-end crisis
In Imola the Mercedes confirmed, on the track and also in the statements of its two drivers, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, that they are in the ‘nobody’s land’. The team that dominated the first seven years of F1’s hybrid era is currently just the fourth force on the trackwith a decent margin of advantage over the rest of the grid but also with a rather significant gap to try to recover from the new top-3 teams in the championship: Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren.
I move forward to the pits
The only, minimal, happy note that the team directed by Toto Wolff can take away from the Italian trip is the apparent step forward made regarding the speed of pit stops. In fact, Mercedes recorded the second and fourth fastest stops of the race. In particular, the only tire change carried out on Lewis Hamilton’s car lasted just 2.12 seconds, just three hundredths more than Sergio Perez’s stop, which once again put the Red Bull mechanics at the top of the standings.
Change of approach
LMercedes’ approach to pit stops has changed in the last year. Toto Wolff himself admitted it during the Austin GP last season: “Our mentality for the last 12 years had been not to be the ‘pit stop world champions’, but to at least avoid having very slow pit stops“, explained the Viennese manager.
Given the giant strides made by Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari in this area too, however, a Brackley have finally started to review their own modus operandi and now the concrete results are finally starting to be seen. However, as long as the performance of the W15 remains the same, a few tenths recovered in the pit lane will certainly not guarantee a turning point for the Anglo-German team.
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