Mercedes vows to make their pit-stops better after disastrous Lewis Hamilton tire changes at US GP

The British racer Lewis Hamilton scored an impressive P2 result at the COTA GP.

Mercedes vows to make their pit-stops better after disastrous Lewis Hamilton tire changes at US GP

Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff. (Via IMAGO)

Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton finished P2 at the recent COTA GP with a mere 2.2-second gap to race leader Max Verstappen. Although Lewis Hamilton was disqualified later due to technical infringements, Hamilton had the pace to potentially win the race if he had a few more laps.

Mercedes adopted the two-stop strategy on mediums. The pit times for Lewis Hamilton were a lofty 3.4 and 3.6 seconds. These pit times were relatively much higher compared to the Red Bull’s 2.4 and 2.5 seconds. Team boss Toto Wolff addressed this issue and put the machinery to blame, not human error. Wolff finally felt that the team needed to address this issue, which was losing them essential time.

Toto Wolff commented on the past of Mercedes’ mindset.

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Our mindset in the last 12 years is that we don't need to be world champions in pitstops.
Toto Wolff said as reported by motorsport.com

He further added: 

We need to avoid very slow pitstops. And now that it has gotten so competitive, we just need to ramp up our game up there.

Toto Wolff said the team needs to avoid ‘very slow’ pitstops and also that the pit-stop times have gotten a lot more competitive over the years.

How did Lewis Hamilton respond to the slow pitstops at the COTA GP?

Hamilton agreed with the fact that pitstops were one of the areas that proved to be critical to the results in Texas. The ex-champion added that he could have possibly challenged Verstappen for the first spot if the team saved a few seconds in the pitlane. He later added that the race was ‘harder than it needed to be’.

Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton
Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton (via BBC)

The Briton also commented on the race start at the COTA GP. He exclaimed that normally the team has great starts to a race. But the racers struggled with race starts at the COTA GP due to unforeseeable reasons. Hamilton said that he lost ground more often than not due to the alleged slow race start.

In the second pit, Hamilton took accountability for the extended pit time. He claimed that he may have gone a bit longer, which potentially caused the crew members to face difficulties in changing the tires of the car. But on the bright side, Hamilton claimed that he was on par with Max Verstappen in terms of pace for many moments of the race.

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